


Eclipsed

by sparrowshellcat



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Pitch Black (2000), Supernatural, The Covenant (2006)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Community: polybigbang, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Polyamory Big Bang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-27
Updated: 2012-11-27
Packaged: 2017-11-19 15:58:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 45,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/575034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparrowshellcat/pseuds/sparrowshellcat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were all on the Hunter-Gratzner for a reason. Xander Harris wanted to get out of the shadow of the Slayer and see the verse, Dean Winchester and his brother Sam were trying to track down their father on his vendetta to find their mother’s killer, Caleb Danvers was sent to bring balance to the verse, and Richard B. Riddick was a prisoner. They all came for different reasons, but they ended up in the same place – crash landed on a desert planet in the Hades system.</p><p>At first, surviving in the desert after a shipwreck seemed to be the only thing they had to worry about. There are other threats, though – a Blue Eyed Devil mercenary named Johns that wants to use them to trap his bounty, a crash that didn’t happen by chance, and a whole race of creatures living under the surface of the planet that is waiting for darkness to fall, so as to consume them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eclipsed

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Poly Big Bang 2012. 
> 
> Naturally, none of these characters belong to me, and are used without permission.
> 
> As always, if it's the most insane crossover you can think of - I am going to be the one writing it. Enjoy!
> 
> \---
> 
> For more fic and art, you can follow me on Tumblr! [sparrowshellcat](http://sparrowshellcat.tumblr.com)

The legends tell that humans used to live on one planet.

All squished together, some of the stories talk about people stacked on top of each other like moving boxes, all huddled together for warmth against the harsh dark of the world outside of their little villages, leaving vast tracks of their world uninhabited and empty as they tried to squeeze into the smallest places they could, like housecats in cardboard boxes, all pressed into the corners. But even with all those open spaces to fill out, if they’d wanted to, the humans that all lived together liked to wreck what they had, and – or so the stories go – eventually they destroyed the planet. Scorched their own skies and grounds and water so that they had to flee, had to get out.

Like rats fleeing a sinking ship, humankind left behind their one little once-green-and-blue planet, and took to the skies.

Xander remembered when he was a kid, in school, bored out of his mind by the stories and the sheer stupidity of the things they wanted them to learn, frustrated and tired. And then one day, a teacher had come up with an assignment to help them understand life and responsibility, and got them a fish – little and orange and quick, flicking about in its bowl as it explored the world.

 _This is a goldfish_ , she had said. _They grow as big as their bowl will let them grow. See how little the fish is? This is a little bowl, he won’t get much bigger_.

Then they had gone to an aquarium, one that had been built to hold animals that had once been brought from the human’s wrecked planet, when they’d left it. Most of the animals it had been built for were long gone, and there were other things there now – things they’d found in the vastness of space, and a few other things they’d made, perhaps. There, in one of the massive tanks, was a goldfish.

 _This is what happens when they get a bowl as big as they can get_ , she’d said.

Xander remembered standing with his palms pressed against the glass of the aquarium, looking up in open mouthed wonder as a goldfish swam slowly through the water, graceful and strangely delicate, but slow and bigger than a human man in exactly the opposite way that the classroom’s goldfish was quick and little. Its mouth, opening and closing as it swam, was bigger than his head, and each of its massive fins flicked as it swam, as though the aquarium water was the air, and the fish was some kind of massive, orange scaled bird. It had been unlike anything he’d ever seen before, surreal.

Humanity had been like that goldfish in that bowl, when they had all lived together. Their bowl wasn’t getting bigger, so they weren’t getting bigger.

But when they had left, and stepped out into the stars, that was a much larger fishbowl.

They grew as large as their tank would allow them.

Humanity scattered to the four winds, to the stars as far as they could manage, finding new worlds to claim in the name of humanity, and when they couldn’t find one that would support their sort of life, they’d drop a series of machines onto it, terraforming machines, they were called, and make it into a planet they could live on. Some people asked about whatever might have been there before the humans arrived – were there other life forms they were destroying? – but the humans had become like a virus on the stars, and like a virus spreads in a petri dish, so too, did they.

Humans would never again fit on one world. The idea was laughable. They had become the dominant race in the whole damn verse, by hook or by crook, damn anything that might have stood in their way.

The verse was their fishbowl, now.

Sometimes, though, Xander sort of wondered about that. After all, humans were inherently squishy and small, and tended to not be able to defend themselves unless they had weapons. Sure, they had become a massive goldfish species – but Xander remembered what had happened to their classroom goldfish, when a window had been left open, and an alley cat had crept inside. He’d been the one to step into the classroom, first, and found that cat, so lean that he could count his ribs through his thin black fur, sitting on the shelf where the goldfish bowl had been. He was licking one of his paws, quietly, and when Xander stepped closer, he had just looked up at him, bright silver eyes inscrutable.

The goldfish bowl was laying on the ground, water and gravel and that stupid little castle scattered over the stone tiles.

The fish wasn’t there, anymore.

Stepping closer, Xander had licked his lips, reaching his fingers out to the predator. Because the cat was a predator. A hunter that had seen an opportunity, and took it.

The cat had snarled, and swiped at his hand.

Xander had scars, to this day, on the meaty part of his hand, where his thumb met his wrist, but he had learned a lesson. Humans might have become the goldfish of the verse’s fishbowl, growing as large as they could manage it – but that didn’t mean there wasn’t still something out there, waiting, watching until the human race was fat enough to eat.

 

\---

 

Something was coming.

No, Caleb thought, with a frown, that wasn’t right. Something was leaving.

He’d never liked this, this _feeling_ that he had when big things were about to happen, a prickling at the back of his neck when something was about to go down. He’d been told, since he was thirteen, that this was part of his legacy, part of his family’s history, so maybe he should focus on being _proud_ of it.

They could keep their damn legacies, far as he was concerned.

Nothing good came without consequences, and Caleb Danvers knew all about those consequences. The verse didn’t _work_ like that, it didn’t just give you good things and let you enjoy them, there was always a drawback, always some way that the verse would find to kick you in the knees, right when you were least expecting it, and you’d find yourself on the ground – at which point the verse would kick you again, over and over, until you finally stopped fighting to stand up, again. The verse wanted you down, and it would keep you down, if it could.

That, his father had said, before, when he’d still been able to talk, was all a part of the balance of the universe.

Caleb hated the balance.

The city was spread out in front of him like a map, lights in people’s windows twinkling like stars on the dark surface of the night sky, almost made Caleb think of a blanket on which someone had tossed a thousand shiny Universal Dollar coins, and they glittered and shone when the light caught them.

His friends were out there, in the city, living their lives and doing the things they needed to do, to make a living and live normal lives.

Sounded nice.

“Caleb?” A soft voice said, and he looked up, startled.

Evelyn Danvers – his mother – was a beautiful woman. His father, when he was younger, used to tell him stories about how he’d fallen in love with Evelyn from the very moment he saw her, and Caleb supposed he could see where his father was coming from, though of course when Caleb saw her, he just saw _Mother_. Her dark hair was curled neatly around her shoulders, in a delicate tumble that looked effortless but had probably taken a lot of work, and she wore a light, gauzy style dress in a pale sky blue that reminded him of the sky when the sun was at its highest in the sky, clear and blue and bright. She smiled softly, when their eyes met, and she said, “Are you ready to go?”

“Thought I didn’t have to leave until tomorrow,” he said, flippantly, trying to lighten the mood, then hesitated, and nodded. “I’m ready.”

“Good,” she said, and padded forward, softly, her slippers whispering on the stone steps as she came forward, then slowly sat to sit on the steps of the balcony of their home, looking out over the city. “You know as well as I that I don’t want you to leave, Caleb, but the balance wouldn’t be maintained if you didn’t go.”

“I hate the balance,” Caleb muttered, sort of rebelliously.

The Golden Boy wasn’t good at rebellion.

“I know you do, sweetheart,” she murmured, reaching up to brush her fingers over his short hair, the same dark brown – nearly black that hers was, stroking it, gently. “I’m not so fond of it myself. But your father… the balance meant _so_ much to him.”

“Mmm, guilting me with father?” He smirked slightly, but just leaned on her shoulder, quietly, basking in her presence for a little longer. Trying to clutch at the last few moments he had with his mother before he left, just in case. He planned to come back – everyone always planned to come back – but not everyone did, sometimes people stayed gone. Before he left, he just wanted to have as much time with her as he could. “That’s not really playing fair, mother, is it?”

“The verse isn’t fair,” she said, as lightly as he, curling her arm around his waist, and pulling Caleb close against her side.

“I’ve noticed,” he murmured, eyes on the city below them.

Evelyn laughed softly, brushing her fingers up and down his arm, just trying to comfort him. “Now, Caleb darling, are you upset because you have to go travelling to keep the balance, or are you displeased because that Sarah girl you liked so much didn’t like you back, after all?”

He groaned. “ _Mother_ …”

“A mother always knows, Caleb, darling,” she said, sweetly, and squeezed his arm. “You’re going to be all right, sweetheart. The balance will eventually be restored, and we know the verse will always balance itself out perfectly in the end. Everything will work out for the best, and it couldn’t possibly be any better.”

“Father used to say that,” he murmured.

“So he did,” she agreed, and looked up when a warm breeze blew through their little balcony space, ruffling their hair, and she smiled softly. “And he was right. Your father was a very wise man, Caleb.”

He frowned slightly, but didn’t argue.

Evelyn stroked his hair again, and murmured, “You know things will turn out well, Caleb. You know your father is always watching.”

“Even if I leave the planet?” He said, cheekily.

“A father’s love knows no boundaries, Caleb,” Evelyn said, without hesitation. “No matter if you went to the edge of the verse and beyond, or if you spent five hundred years in a cryo sleep and woke to a world you’d never seen, no matter what else happens in this verse, your father’s love will follow you and watch over you until the end of your days.”

“That’s… sweet, mother.” Caleb murmured, quietly, and lifted his head to smile at her. “Thank you.”

“Of course. Now… on this journey of yours, be careful, yes?” She said, shifting her position, her dress whispering gently on the stone as she twisted to face him properly, resting her hands on his knees. “Your father was much better with this than any of us were, and _certainly_ better than I, but I have been looking into the signs as well as I can. Just remember, Caleb, that it will all work out for the best.”

“Yes, mother. I’ll remember.”

\---

 

“ _Xander Harris_!”

He yelped, and jumped, startled, spinning to look at the door of his crappy little apartment, which was under his parent’s house, and wasn’t really that much to look at. It wasn’t really their fault that it was so crappy, there were problems everywhere on this planet with condensation and dirt, but that probably had something to do with the fact that this was a planet mostly full of rock, and houses were carved out of the hillsides and down into the rocks, a holdover from when they’d first arrived on the planet and started making shelter in the caves on the cliffs. They had finally started building houses out of the hills themselves, because every time they’d tried to build old-Earth style houses, they ended up being knocked down by the wind and the storms. It was safer to live in the caves.

“…hey, Willow?” He said, awkwardly, juggling an armful of clothes.

The redhead took a deep breath, hands on her hips, then twisted to peer back out the door, and called, “He’s down here.”

That didn’t sound promising. Xander shoved his clothes into the bag, then dusted his palms off on his pants, and watched as Willow and Buffy bounded down the stairs, looking displeased. The girls got to the bottom of the stairs, then crossed their arms in identical expressions of serious face – when had Willow taught Buffy serious face, that wasn’t fair! – and looked up at him.

“…yes?” He said, at last.

“What’s this?” Buffy asked, arching a brow.

He pursed his lips. “Expert muscle control. I’ve never really been able to do that sort of thing myself, despite _hours_ of practicing in the mirror, but I totally admire your control for being able to do that one eyebrow arching thing…”

She sighed. “ _This_ , Xander. The packing up all of your stuff thing. Where, exactly, do you think you’re going?”

“I’m road tripping.” Xander said, with a grin, trying not to look awkward.

Willow’s kicked puppy expression wasn’t going to make him feel any better. She seemed to really like that kicked puppy look, and he couldn’t blame her, it always seemed to work for her. “Road tripping? Like… travelling just around the planet, or…?”

He licked his lips, and swallowed. “…no?”

“Xander!” Buffy yelped, looking displeased.

“Oh come on, Buff…” he groaned, softly, running his hand through his hair, licking his lips. “Look, it’s great that you guys have got your whole lives laid out for you, and plans and everything, and all. You’re doing amazing as the Slayer, Buffster, and… man, Willow, you are doing _so_ good with the witch thing, and I’m really happy for you both! But I haven’t got anything here, it’s just… me. In this crappy little cave. And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life as ‘Slayer’s Boy’, as awesome as that is, so… I thought I’d go out, see the verse, see what there is to see, see if I can find some kind of job or something…”

“But you’re coming _back_ , right?!” Willow yelped.

“Oh yeah, totally.” Xander said, quickly. “Probably. Most likely. I plan on it. I just want to see the verse. Get out of this cave.”

Buffy looked suspicious. “…you’d better come back, or I’ll go out there in the verse and track you down.”

Xander squeaked. “…yes ma’am.”

“Oh _Xander_ …” Willow sighed, and surged forward, curling her arms around him, hugging him tightly as she buried her face in his chest, shivering slightly. And yeah, Xander immediately curled his arms back around her, holding his childhood friend close, burying his face in her red hair, just breathing in that scent that was so undeniably _Willow_. “Why do you have to leave us? I don’t want you to leave us…”

“Hey, you and Buffy had both made names for yourself.” He murmured, rubbing her back. “Don’t you think it’s time I made a name for myself?”

“Hey, you have a name for yourself!” Buffy protested. “You’re the dude that helped us kill the mayor!”

Xander rolled his eyes, and leaned back a little.

Willow snuffled softly, and tried to pretend that she wasn’t crying. She was, though, quietly, wiping at her eyes self consciously, trying not to look like she was weak. Xander and Buffy both quietly ignored her tears, to give her the time she needed to get her confidence and calm back, then they would pull her back into the conversation. It was a mutual respect sort of thing.

“I just… want to see the verse, Buffster. Make a name for myself that’s not… you know… part of the group. I want to make my own way.”

“Okay, I guess.” She sighed, heavily, crossing her arms again.

“You’re gonna make a _great_ name for yourself,” Willow said, confidently, reaching up to cup his jaw for a moment, grinning at him. “You are a _good man_ , Xander. And you’re gonna wow the verse. They’re not gonna see you coming, and you’re gonna knock the verse’s socks off.”

Xander laughed, softly, and asked, “Does the verse actually _wear_ socks?”

“It was metaphorical.” She rolled her eyes.

“So…” Buffy flopped down on Xander’s bed, which was really just a pull out couch, grinning up at him. “Where are you gonna go, on this exploration of the verse? See some of those rich worlds and live it up with the hoity toities like Cordelia is planning, or explore some backwoods worlds, or… ooh, maybe go to some of the merc worlds, see if you can pick up criminals… criminals have got to be easier to catch than monsters, right?”

He snorted, and sat on the edge of the bed, grinning when Willow flopped beside Buffy, on her stomach, head pillowed on her crossed arms. “Catching bounties would be easy for _you_ , Buffster, not sure it’s my thing.”

“Well, who knows, if I ever kill all the monsters, maybe I’ll become a merc.” Buffy snickered.

“You’ll never kill _all_ the monsters.” He rolled his eyes, then yelped when she gave him a sharp expression. “Okay, maybe you could kill all the monsters… you totally could kill all the monsters, you’re good at the slaying thing…”

“I’ve been doing some research,” Willow said, suddenly, cheerfully. Once they started getting into research and stuff, this was really more of her domain, this was the sort of things she could talk about for hours and not get bored with. Willow loved information, so she loved that Buffy’s Watcher happened to be a librarian, because he had access to vast amounts of information. “Did you know that there are actually planets in the verse that don’t _have_ Slayers? _Most_ of the planets in the verse don’t have Slayers, actually. Which seems crazy, cause I thought, well, maybe that means there are less monsters, but no, there are just as many beasts and things. Apparently _we_ are the one of the few planets with a Slayer!”

“Well, that’s just dumb.” Buffy scoffed. “Maybe I should become a Slayer for Hire. Like a Soldier of Fortune, just… with slayage.”

“Well, tell you what, if I find any planets in my explorations of the verse that are in _desperate_ need of a Slayer, I’ll send you a message.” Xander grinned, cheerfully, and ruffled Buffy’s hair. She laughed, and he felt like everything was good, warm and bright. This was why it had been so hard for him to decide to leave, after all, because he would be leaving _this_ behind, and his girls were his support group. But he had to make a life for himself outside of just his girls. Xander really needed to be his own person and create a life for himself. He just wanted to come home and not just be the Slayer’s boy.

“So when are you leaving?” Willow asked, quietly.

He took a deep breath. “Tomorrow, actually. I got myself a ticket on a transport vessel that’s heading out to some of the outer rim mining worlds, I mean, it isn’t glamorous or anything, but it’s cheap, so…”

“What’s the name of the ship?” Buffy frowned, curiously.

“Hunter-Gratzner.” He grinned. “Not much to look at, but they say that it’s a solid ship, and it’s never had any problems, so it sounds pretty awesome. And hey, at least I don’t have to _remember_ the trip, because I’ll be in cryo the entire time.”

“Ugh,” Buffy crinkled her nose. “I _hate_ cryo.”

“Cryo’s not so bad,” Willow said, frowning slightly. “I mean, it’s just… sleeping.”

“It’s not, though.” She said, shaking her head. “It’s… I don’t like it.”

“Well, it’s a good thing that I’m going, then, isn’t it?” Xander grinned, and shook his head, stretching. “So… who wants to help me pack up the last of my stuff?”

Their identical groans just made him grin.

 

\---

 

“ _Sammy_ , get your ass up here, I’m not going to ask again!”

The scrawny, gangly teenager burst up out of the alley that he had been loitering in, clutching at the strap of his duffle bag, long dark hair hanging in his eyes. There was dirt smeared across the bridge of his nose, but he was grinning, widely, up at them. “So if you don’t ask again, that means that I don’t have to come with you, right?”

“Hey, _you’re_ the one that doesn’t have problems with ships, you brat, c’mon.” Dean held out his hand to him, stubbornly, and said, “Get up here.”

Sam rolled his eyes, and scrambled up the steps to the dock that Dean was standing on, grabbing his brother’s hand. He’d finally started getting taller, but Sam was still shorter than his brother, he held his hand and let Dean lead him towards the Hunter-Gratzner, that waited like a hulking beast, waiting to accept hapless travelers into the gaping maw that was its mouth. Or perhaps Dean’s interpretation of it was a _touch_ morbid, but he _really_ hated flying.

“So,” Sam said, quietly. “You sure we have to go?”

Dean heaved a heavy sigh, biting the inside of his cheek as he squeezed his baby brother’s hand. “You know that if there was _any_ way that we didn’t have to go on a damn ship, I would take it in a heartbeat. But dad sent the message, and… we gotta go.”

His brother sighed softly, curling into Dean, slightly. It was comfort, really, to just try and get as close to his brother as possible. It was them against the verse, usually, since John was out scouring the verse for the things  that had killed their mother, all those years back. Honestly, Dean thought that maybe John was acting as a bounty hunter or something, instead of _actually_ hunting the things, but… to be honest, his own knowledge of it was sparse. He just knew that they’d been trained to be warriors, so that, just in case they ever saw one of those sons of bitches they’d be able to kill them. But _flying_ …

Dean could kill someone by throwing a knife at them from twenty paces, but he still didn’t like flying.

“So does he think he’s tracked them down?” Sam asked, abruptly.

Startled from his thoughts by his brother’s question, Dean looked down at him, and frowned slightly. “He says he’s not sure,” he admitted. “But the message said we’d been here too long, that was the important thing.”

“That we’d been here too long?” He crinkled his nose.

“Yeah, well… dad was all worried that if we stayed in one place too long, we’d be found. You know we have to keep moving, just in case… the things that killed mom _could_ be trying to track us down, right? So yeah, we gotta keep moving.”

“Last time we had to move, dad came to move us.” Sam muttered,  squeezing Dean’s fingers.

“Yeah… he did.”

And yeah, they both sounded bitter.

And they both knew it.

One of the ship’s crew members, a woman with short blond hair and a serious little furrow between her brows that Dean would normally be eager to try and kiss off of her face, stepped out of the ship. She had a clipboard resting on her hip, and looking up at the deck and the people that were milling about on it, she let out a puff of air, then said, “All right, let’s work through this list… there some Winchesters here?”

Sam held up a hand, quickly. “Here!”

“We’re not in school, Sammy,” Dean muttered, but squeezed his brother’s fingers and they headed towards the woman and that open mouth of the ship. “Yeah, Sam and Dean.”

“C’mon in.” She nodded, and stepped to the side so that they had the space to walk in. “You’re in compartments twelve and thirteen, right behind the cabin.” She smirked slightly, and Dean tugged his eyes up from her chest and the name tag that was embroidered onto it, _Carolyn Fry_ , to meet her eyes. “The most stable part of the whole bird, so if you’re concerned about turbulence…”

“Do I look like I’m concerned about turbulence?” Dean scoffed, trying to sound casual and nonchalant.

“Considering how tight you’re holding the kid’s hand?” Carolyn Fry arched a brow. “Yes.”

Dean immediately loosened his hold on his little brother’s hand, and didn’t react, otherwise. Sam didn’t say a word, either, but he could feel him clenching and unclenching his hand, still within his, and a quick look out of the corner of his eye confirmed that Sam’s hand was a mottled red and white, squeezed too hard, Dean’s fingers having left marks behind. Hopefully it wouldn’t bruise – though if it did, at least by the time they got out of cryo, the bruises would be long gone.

He cleared his throat. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” she smirked, and went back to her checklist. “All right, who’s next?”

Dean shook his head, and tugged his brother into the ship proper, looking around. They had to pass through a couple other units, one by one, each of them lined up with pods that people would eventually be sleeping in. It felt oddly clinical, he thought, like they were walking through some kind of factory for people, piled in on top of each other like bowling pins, and he shuddered slightly at the thought. Dean had a problem as it was with flying, thinking about flying through space with them all packed, factory style, in coffins…

Another shudder ran through his body.

“It’s okay, Dean.” Sam said, quietly, and he looked down at his little brother, swallowing hard. For Sammy, he could do this. “Honest, it’s gonna be okay.”

“Liar,” he smirked, and kissed the top of his brother’s head, then tugged him into the front compartment, the one right behind the cabin. This was the one they were supposed to be staying in, she’d said… ah. There were their compartments, side by side, and looking _far_ too much like a pair of coffins, fuck, he hated these cryo pods. And for a twenty six month trip? That sounded like a _great_ idea. “Cryo is never okay. But we’ll make it, we always make it.”

“Yeah,” Sam grinned up at him, and squeezed Dean’s hand, then let go to tug his bag off his back. “So… gonna lock me in?”

“I’d rather not, but… someone’s gotta take care of the squirt, huh?” He grinned, and tugged the door of Sam’s pod open, grabbing his brother’s bag off of him so that he could shove it into the compartment underneath. Voyages like this, they weren’t really designed for people who wanted to travel in style, or extreme comfort, or even with a lot of things. They were really designed for people that just really needed to get from one place to another and didn’t really want to waste any UD credits on anything fancy or unnecessary. No frills sort of travelling. Functional, but that was about it. Locking up the little storage space that Sam’s bag had been shoved into, he looked up as his baby brother hopped up into the pod, and shook his head. “I think you take after dad more than I do… dad never seems to mind cryo, either.”

“Did mom like cryo?” Sam sked, curiously.

Den hesitated, then ruffled his brother’s scraggly hair. “Hated it. Even more than I do, I think. When I was real little, she told me that it wasn’t natural, that people weren’t meant to sleep like that, for so long.”

“I dunno, it’s not so bad,” he shrugged, tugging on the straps that were designed to keep him in place when they were travelling and Sam would be sleeping. “It’s sort of normal, isn’t it?”

“You and normal,” he rolled his eyes.

“What?” Sam flushed, shifting.

“I’m just saying that it isn’t – “ Dean cut himself off at the sound of scuffling near the door of their compartment. There was movement, sounded a bit like a struggle, and a moment later, a man in a Marshall’s uniform stepped into the compartment, dragging another man along with him. The man being dragged seemed sort of out of it, like maybe he’d been drugged or beaten really hard in the head, or something, and stumbled along behind the taller, slighter man.

The Marshall’s eyes met Dean’s, and he smirked crookedly, as though terribly proud of himself. It was an odd reaction, why would the man be _proud_ of himself, but no, that probably _did_ make sense, after all, he had a prisoner that he was leading, didn’t he? He was tall and lean, and Dean wanted to describe him as ‘whip-like’, as though he could snap out at you at any time, like a whip, and leave a sharp little stinging wound. Blonde locks curled over his forehead, his eyes were startlingly blue, like they saw right through you, and his lazy smile seemed to speak of someone that was always hiding a secret right behind that lazy curving of the lips. His uniform was clean and new, far neater than any Marshall Dean had ever encountered, and the badge that was pinned on his chest looked too new, crooked as though he wasn’t used to pinning it so that it didn’t sag.

It was a good disguise.

But it was a disguise. Dean had watched his father pretend to be a thousand different people in his life, and he knew a disguise when he saw one.

He was genuinely at a loss of why any ordinary man would pretend to be a Marshall to _arrest_ someone, though. To hunt down information, to try and find those that had murdered your wife and the mother of your children, that he understood. This, he didn’t get it.

“Why is he blindfolded?” Sam murmured.

Dean almost corrected his little brother. The Marshall-not-Marshall had bright blue eyes, they weren’t blindfolded, until he realized that Sam’s attention was on the man he was leading, instead.

In every way that the first man had been lean and thin, this man was not.

He seemed to be made of muscles, broad shouldered, arms thick and corded, and hands broad and strong, as though he could reach up, take your head in his broad-palmed hands, and simply pop your head off your shoulders. His jaw was strong and squared, but oddly, someone – presumably the fake Marshall – had shoved a metal bit into his mouth, like for a horse, and his jaw was forced apart, metal bar between his teeth. Dean had to think that it must be hard to breath, or swallow, with that in your mouth. He was blindfolded with a thick canvas cloth, and there was a metal collar around his neck, his head had been closely shaved to his skin, though he could see the dark shadow that said that he wasn’t balding, he just shaved his head, and his arms and legs were both manacled, clearly trying to keep him completely contained. It sort of looked like someone trying to put a bridle on a hurricane, and Dean sort of imagined that it must be just as hard to keep him contained, except for whatever it was that had rendered him… pliable.

The fake Marshall paused in front of the boys, grinning at them with that secretive little smirk, and said, “Better remember to listen to your parents, boys, because if you don’t, this guy will come and gobble you up.”

Sam was the one that scoffed, and said, “Yeah right.”

He didn’t seem to be phased by Sam’s lack of being impressed, and shook his head, still grinning, and pushing his prisoner forward. The muscular man stumbled, and Dean caught the way that his lips curled back, around that bit, as he grimaced. Even contained, the prisoner looked powerful. “I ain’t kidding. This here is the Man Killer.”

“The Man Killer?” Dean repeated, leaning his shoulder on Sam’s cryo case, watching them as the blond shoved the bald man into one of the cryo pods. It wasn’t the same as the others, it was larger, and there were notices slapped on its door, warning not to open it. Prisoner transport, Dean had heard that some travel vessels had those.

Locking up his prisoner, the blond rocked back slightly, swaying oddly. Was he drunk? “This here is the Riddick.”

“ _Really_?!” Sam leaned forward, and Dean was glad that his brother had already been strapped in, because he was pretty sure that his kid brother would have been darting over and trying to get as close to the prisoner as possible, because Sammy, Dean knew, was nothing if not a huge fan of _interesting_ characters. Riddick, naturally, was a name that everyone had heard. The man that couldn’t be contained, and yeah, Dean had overheard a few _normal_ parents warning their children with stories that The Riddick would come and eat them if they didn’t do what they were told. Dean didn’t know why… from his own reading of the stories on the infonet, he didn’t think this Riddick guy had actually ever _eaten_ anyone. “That’s… _actually_ Riddick? Like, you actually caught him?!”

“I sure did,” the man grinned, and slammed the glass door of Riddick’s cryo pod shut. “I’ve been after him for years, but… _I_ caught the Riddick.”

“Hn.” Dean considered that, arching a brow. “Your bosses must be thrilled.”

“Believe me, they are.” He grinned, and headed over to them. Now that he wasn’t holding onto his prisoner, the man seemed to sway slightly as he walked, even more. “The name’s Johns.”

He nodded at the man, and said, “Congrats, Johns. Now, we ah… need to get locked in, you mind…?”

“Sure,” Johns said, though his eyes didn’t seem to like staying to themselves, as he sort of looked Dean up and down, and despite the fact that he’d probably given a thousand girls that exact look in his life, Dean very nearly wanted to throw his arms in front of himself, as though to hide himself from the other’s I’m-trying-to-look-through-your-clothes leer. He didn’t even think Johns knew he was _doing_ it, though.

Not just drunk. Tweaker of some kind, maybe?

“Thanks,” Sam said, and shook his head, long hair still hanging in his face. “Nice to meet you, Johns.”

“Sure thing, kid,” he said, dismissively, and headed for the cargo bays.

“Hm. Fake Marshall, but if he _really_ caught the Riddick…” Dean murmured, once he’d left the compartment, and he was able to return to making sure that Sam was tightly buckled in. He didn’t want his baby brother bouncing around during the trip. “That’s sort of impressive.”

“Can I see him, before you lock me into sleep?” Sam asked, hopefully.

“Nope. You saw him when he was going past, you’ll see him again when we land, probably,” Dean said, and just laughed when his brother gave him a heartbroken, disappointed look. “All right, squirt, you’re all buckled in… you ready to go to sleep?”

His brother licked his lips, and Dean saw a hint of fear in his eyes. Sam always said cryo didn’t bother him, but there was a hint…

“Try not to focus on the dreams,” Dean whispered, and stood up on his toes, pressing his lips to Sam’s forehead, for just a moment, a firm kiss. “And remember, our ancestors are watching over you.”

Sam smiled, bravely. “Good night, Dean.”

“See you in twenty-six months,” he smirked, and ruffled Sam’s hair before closing the door, and locking it. Crew personnel started the Cryo Cycle on some ships, but it wasn’t like it was a hard thing to start up, and at least on this ship, they didn’t need to have needles and the blood exchange system, like they did on other ships. This was one of the non-invasive cryo units, and when he tapped in the controls on the panel, he could already hear the hiss of the sleeping agents being pumped into his brother’s coffin. Looking up, Dean watched as Sam’s eyelids started to fall, as though heavy, and finally shut completely as his brother’s body relaxed, asleep.

“Sleep tight, Sammy,” Dean murmured, and pressed his palm against the glass for a moment, then headed for his own cryo pod. Shoving his own bag under his pod, he locked it tight, then straightened. Looked like he’d have to wait until a crew member came by to lock him in.

“Ready to go to sleep?”

Dean looked up, sharply. He hadn’t expected to be snuck up on. Clearly this whole… getting in the air and going into cryo thing was throwing him off even more than he’d expected.

Carolyn Fry stood a few feet behind him, and smirked at him, hands on her hips, that clipboard still tucked under her arm. “Well? Ready for getting into cryo?”

He sighed, and nodded, stepping up into his cryo pod. He hated this, knew that this was going to be twenty-six long months of unpleasantness, but… it was really the only way to travel. He also didn’t think he’d like being _awake_ for twenty-six months, either. He’d much rather be sleeping, even if the sleep was terrible. Grabbing the straps, he buckled himself in, then said, “Yep, I’m ready.”

“Right then. Sleep tight, kid,” Fry said, and closed his pod door before tapping instructions into the control panel beside it.

Dean watched her, then breathed in deeply when he heard the hiss of gases being released into the pod. He could feel it, cool as it slid down through his breath, into his lungs, and unlike normal air that seemed to warm up when it got inside you, this air stayed cold, like he was breathing in aerated mint, or something, cool and tingling as it spread through his lungs. A few more deep breaths, and he felt himself slipping rapidly to sleep, eyes slipping shut.

The last thing he saw, before he finally slid to sleep, was Fry giving him a thumbs up. Good, he wasn’t dying.

And Dean slipped to sleep.

 

\---

 

Xander had been sleeping quite peacefully.

He actually liked cryo, despite Buffy’s grumbling that it was weird and she didn’t like it at all, because he liked the idea that he got to lay down – or stand on a forty-five degree angle, as he was in this cryo pod – and go to sleep for an expended period of time. Hell, on grumpy days, when nothing was going right and he hated the world, Xander would say that he just wanted to crawl into bed and stay there for a month. So on days like that, he sort of wished that he could crawl into cryo and go to sleep for a few weeks at a time. Shame he wasn’t going anywhere at the time.

So twenty-two months  out into the twenty-six month trip, Xander had been sleeping quite peacefully, without dreams, without any knowledge of the passage of time. He was just _sleeping_ , as though in a coma, or something, and nothing bothered him at all.

And then something had woken him up.

At first, he couldn’t understand what, exactly, had woken him up. After all, you were supposed to wake slowly and sort of gently from cryo, so that it didn’t startle you and send you into shock. Instead, Xander had just been _jerked_ awake, as though a bucket of cold water had been thrown on him, and he gasped, shaking, trying to figure out what the _hell_ was going on. Panting, he looked around, wildly, then realized that there were flashing red lights. Some kind of alarm. What…?

There was a _ping_ then the sharp crack of breaking glass, and he jumped, startled, when a very small _something_ – it was called a micro asteroid, but under the circumstances, Xander could be forgiven for not knowing that – shot through the glass on the front of his cryo pod like a bullet, and slammed into – and through – the padding that he was leaning on. Jumping, he struggled out of the straps that kept him contained, and slapped his palms against the glass, trying to get out. He was trapped, though, all those failsafes that were designed to keep a passenger inside their pod during travel still in place, despite the fact that the integrity of the pod had been compromised by the little micro asteroids blasting through the glass. That had been what had woken him up – the gases that were supposed to keep a person constantly asleep, when they were in cryo, had been sucked out into the vacuum of the ship, when the glass had been broken.

Another of those micro asteroids hit the glass, and Xander jumped.

And then a series of them blasted through the side of the ship, and he watched in horror as the man in the compartment across from him – who knew who he was, he just sort of looked like any normal man, far as Xander could tell, except for the fact that he was sleeping – was suddenly riddled with those micro asteroids, his whole body jerking as though he was being shot over and over and over again by an automatic weapon of some kind. His body looked like a puppet on a string that someone was just jerking on the strings of, over and over, just trying to make him move as much as possible.

Then, abruptly, he went limp.

“Holy shit,” Xander gasped, gaping at the limp man in his pod, then started trying to get out of his _own_ in a fervor, not wanting to meet the same fate. In his fever to get out of the pod, finally his hand found the emergency release bar, and he was finally able to jerk it back.

The glass doors flew open, and Xander was flung forward, landing on the floor of the cabin with a crash. Well, _that_ hurt, but at least he was out of the path of the micro asteroids, and only moments after he’d slammed to the floor, more of them ripped through his pod, tearing apart the cushioning of the back, and raking across a few of the pods beside his, too. A few more passengers jerked the way that first man had, then went still, and Xander found himself gaping up at them in horror, mouth hanging open.

Then someone _else_ slammed to the floor, the same way he had, and he twisted onto his side, gaping at them.

Short woman, short blond hair, wearing a pair of overalls. Her eyes met his, and he knew, just from the expression in her eyes, that she too had seen the people killed in their damn _sleep_ , not even aware of the fact that they’d been killed, just went to sleep in their pods for a long trip, then they were dead. Just like that. He couldn’t remember her name – was he supposed to remember her name – but Xander wasn’t actually sure if that was because he didn’t know it, or if it was because of the confusion that typically followed cryo sleep, when a person’s mind was trying to get itself back into its normal frame of mind, trying to catch up with everything that had happened.

“Are you the captain?” She panted.

Xander hesitated, trying to remember, then shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“…am I the captain?”

His brows furrowed, trying to recall that. “Maybe?”

“Right.” She panted, and pushed herself up to her hands and knees, panting. “Come on, we have the level the ship…”

“Right,” he agreed, that made sense, and stumbled up to his feet, following her when she moved towards the front of the ship. The door between the first compartment and the cabin was open, and they both tumbled through it into the cabin, panting. She dropped into the pilot’s seat, then nodded at the second one, the one the navigator was supposed to sit in, and ordered, “Get in there, figure out where we are.”

Xander obediently dropped into the seat, pulling up the displays as ordered, then hesitated. He knew how to read maps, he’d learned that years ago, in school, but _navigation systems_ … he wasn’t terribly familiar with those. Looking up, he said, “I don’t think I’m the navigator.”

She hesitated, then pushed herself out of the seat she was in. “You must be the pilot. I’ll check the maps…”

As he moved to take the seat she’d just vacated, Xander suddenly stopped her with a hand on the shoulder, and pointed to the embroidered nametag on her coveralls. “Carolyn Fry. Pilot. You’re the pilot. I’m… not wearing… I don’t work here. I’m a passenger.”

Fry looked down at herself, then breathed, “Right. _Right_. Can you _read_ maps?”

“Yeah,” he nodded, swallowing. The confusion was starting to clear, he was starting to remember everything. God, what the hell had happened. “I can read maps.”

“Then read those maps.” She pointed back at the Navigator’s Panel. “ _Find out where we are_. I’m going to steady out the ship… just… tell me where we are, okay, you don’t have to know the route, just tell me where we are.”

“Right.” He dropped back into the seat again, fiddling with the controls until the map he needed popped up on the screen.

The whole ship suddenly shook, and Xander yelped, grabbing at the instrument panel.

“Shit…” Fry hissed, and howled back at him, “ _Where are we_?”

Still holding onto the panel, trying not to just get thrown out of his seat, his eyes flicked across the map, confused. “Hades. It’s the Hades System.”

“ _Hades System_?” She repeated, then swore colourfully as she struggled to keep the ship straight in the air, but it just kept shaking, harder and harder, as though it was being buffeted by winds. However, it _couldn’t_ be buffeted by winds, they were in _space_ , and there was no air to be hit by wind out here. “There is no Hades System on the trade routes, where the hell have we gotten…”

“Can you see anything?” Xander twisted to look at her. “Out the windows?”

“Maybe…” Fry flicked a few of the switches, to lift the metal plates that covered the windows. They were kept down while they were all in cryo – because why the hell did they need them when they were all sleeping? – and when they were entering the atmosphere of planets, to make sure that the windows weren’t damaged in the descent. So flicking them up wasn’t much of a problem, and it seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing for her to do. They could check the stars, maybe the navigation system had gotten as turned around by the abrupt drop out of cryo as they had been.

Only the panels didn’t just open like they were supposed to.

The moment that she tried to get them to move up, they were suddenly _ripped_ off of the windows, and both of them yelped in horror when the metal panels flew away, and exposed _flames_. Beyond the flames, there was the oddly orange gold mottled light of a sky, and a wide eyed Xander howled, “We’re going into atmo?!”

“Oh _shit_ ,” Fry gasped, and started flicking out the stabilizer panels, trying to make the ship straighten back out, trying to keep them from _crashing_ , oh shit…

The whole ship jolted, and Xander yelped, “What was that?”

Fry’s eyes were wide as she looked up at the screen that denoted the ship’s status, and gasped, “The last two compartments were just lost.”

“ _Lost?_ ” He repeated, and pushed himself up to his feet, staggering across the cabin, which was rolling and moving as though they were in a ship on an ocean, and grabbed the back of her seat, leaning over her shoulder as he tried to look at the screen. “Am I – am I reading that right? The compartments just… they were just _torn off the ship_?”

“Yeah,” Fry grunted, and grabbed a large lever, slamming it down as she tried to use the flaps to steady out the ship.

The problem was, the Hunter-Gratzner was a big ship, and it was sort of designed to be operated _intact_. So with whole compartments torn off, it was having difficulty getting itself even. The front of the ship was now far heavier than it was supposed to be, and despite her best efforts, it wasn’t working, the ship was going nose-first.

“I have to lose weight!” Fry said, flicking a few of the switches, then the whole ship lurched.

“What did you do?” Xander yelped.

“Purged ballast.”

“ _Ballast_?”

“Cargo hold.” Fry said, shortly, jerking back on another lever, swearing when it seemed to be stuck. “I flushed the cargo hold.”

Clutching at the back of her seat, still, he said, “….were there passengers in that hold?”

“No, what kind of person do you take me for?!.” Fry said, and shook her head. “Just cargo. But I think we might _need_ to flush some passengers… we have to level the ship, and it’s too heavy…”

“You can’t – “ Xander started, then pointed at her. “Give me two minutes to wake them up. Get them out of their pods, then we can flush the weight of the pods, that would do it…”

“We don’t _have_ two minutes!” Fry yelped.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

“Then give me one!” He hollered, and darted towards the hold. He hesitated, at the door, and grabbed a pipe. There were a lot of broken bits of detritus left around, because of the asteroids, perhaps, and he shoved the pipe he’d snagged in the door, forcing it to stay open. He didn’t want the ship to start some kind of emergency flush procedure and send them all out into the atmo, where they’d immediately be killed. None of them deserved that. Taking a deep breath, he bolted back into the hold, and let his eyes flick everywhere. He could wake the passengers one by one, but he didn’t have _time_ for that, Fry was right when she said they didn’t have two minutes…

There was a control panel for all the cryo pads.

Crying out in relief, Xander darted over, and started triggering the emergency wake up procedure, swallowing hard. He could hear Fry howling at him to hurry up, voice cracking from the strain, and he knew this was dangerous, if the ship crashed with them intact, it would be safer for the passengers to be in the pods during impact, but if they had to flush them to keep the ship aloft…

Passengers were flung out of their pods, the same way he had been, and Xander looked up, watching as they sort of stumbled to their feet, looking confused.

“Get in the cabin!” Xander shouted, and pointed, knowing they’d all be dazed and confused, and was relieved as he saw them begin to stagger into the cabin. One of them, a man that looked about his age, walked up to Xander’s side, arms spread as though he was walking on a ship. He looked less confused than the other’s, though, which was odd, but reassuring. Maybe he could help.

“What’s going on?” He said, seriously.

“We’re crashing,” he panted, and nodded at the cabin. “Get in there, we may have to flush.”

The dark haired young man considered that for a moment, then shook his head, and stood beside him, holding onto a piece of pipe to keep steady. “No, I’ll stay here. I can help.”

“It’s not safe.” He tried.

“And yet, here you are, trying to help people get out.” The dark haired one said, with a smirk, and gripped tighter to the pipe when the whole ship sort of lurched, the front of the ship jerking up, suddenly. “Is that a good sign?”

“Well, she’s trying to get the front up, so…” Xander murmured.

There was movement to their left, and a blond man in a Marshall’s uniform tumbled forward, dropping to his hands and knees as he retched all over the floor, clear bile spilling on the floor. Xander winced, trying not to lose his own lunch – not that he’d _had_ lunch in almost two years, actually, but that was how cryo worked – at the sight of it, but he swallowed, hard, and said, “Can you make it to the cabin, there, guy?”

“Where’s my prisoner?” The man rasped, looking up at them, eyes wild.

“Prisoner?” Xander asked, confused.

The dark haired man beside him nodded at the corner of the compartment, where there was a larger cryo pod than the rest of them, marked with _Danger: Do not open_ and such, the glass door shattered and open – and whoever had been inside was not, in fact, inside anymore.

“Oh.” Xander breathed, and was about to suggest that maybe the prisoner had moved to the cabin with everyone else when the whole ship lurched again, violently, then all of Xander’s efforts to get everyone out of their pods so that perhaps Fry could flush the ship and save them went to waste, because the whole ship slammed to dirt, and bounced, and they were thrown about the compartment. He clung to the pipe he’d been holding onto a moment before, trying to keep steady, and howled in shock when the back of the ship seemed to be torn right off. Sunlight flooded the ship, scorchingly bright in comparison to the nearly complete darkness they’d been trapped in before, blinding. There was the horrific squealing sound of metal tearing and being ripped apart, parts of the ship being literally ripped off of the rest of it, leaving them exposed and vulnerable, and he squeezed his eyes shut when he heard an agonized scream coming from someone, and tried not to hear it.

The whole ship skidded along the ground, bouncing as though hitting something, then finally came to a stop, and Xander slid down to the floor of the ship, hands shaking from the effort of trying to stay upright during the crash.

He took a few deep breaths, trying to calm himself down, then Xander pushed himself up, and nudged the shoulder of the dark haired guy that had been helping him. “Hey… hey, are you all right?”

Groaning softly, he sat up, and nodded. He didn’t seem to look injured or even breathless, which Xander was sort of jealous of. “Yeah, I think I’m fine. Caleb, by the way.”

“Xander,” he responded in turn, and grabbed a pipe to haul himself up with, wincing slightly as he did. Unlike Caleb, who looked remarkably unphased by the crash itself, Xander’s shoulder had smashed pretty hard against the wall, and he had to rotate it a few times to make sure it was even still in its socket. It was, thank goodness, because he was sure that, in this wreck, there were probably going to be some people that needed a lot more medical attention than just that. “Shit, this is a mess… gods, are there any other survivors, or…?”

There was more movement at the cabin doors, and a young man stepped out of it, frowning. “You guys all right?”

Xander blinked. “Oh. Yes. We are. Hello, survivor.”

“…Dean works. Is there anyone else?”

Xander shook his head as he stepped over some of the debris, working his way towards the cabin, hoping that there were more survivors than just this Dean in there. Fry, if nothing else, at least, she could help them get out of the wreck, at least. “Don’t know, yet, we haven’t really had a chance to check. But the prisoner is missing at least,” He nodded towards the massive, destroyed prisoner pod.

Dean arched a brow. “…well, that’s not good, since that was _apparently_ the Riddick.”

Caleb frowned. “The Riddick?”

Xander squeaked. “…seriously? Like… we’re talking the _actual_ Riddick? The Man Killer? He… he was the prisoner?”

“Apparently,” he nodded, frowning. “Have you seen Johns?”

“Johns?” Caleb asked, following Xander through the wreckage.

“The Marshall that had captured him.”

“Oh. Yeah, we saw him.” Xander hesitated, and glanced back at where they had seen him. “Well… we saw him a few seconds before the crash, anyway… um. I’m not sure what happened to him _now_. There’s a very good chance that he got, ah… dragged. Outside.”

Dean arched a brow. “Well then. No more Marshall.”

“We should probably look for survivors,” Caleb said, leaning in the cabin, frowning. There was quite a bit of movement inside, so it looked like most of the people that they’d freed from their pods had managed to get inside. “Get our resources together…”

“Dean!” Someone howled from inside the cabin, and Dean twisted, at once.

It was a boy that was calling for him, small and lanky and awkward, hair hanging in his face. His eyes were wide, fearful, and he said, feverishly, “The captain… you need to see this.”

“The captain?” Xander frowned. “I thought Fry said…”

“It’s Fry.” The boy interrupted him, grabbing at Dean’s arm. “Come _on_ , Dean…”

“We’re coming, Sammy.” Dean said, and glanced back at Xander and Caleb. “We might need you, too.”

When they entered the cabin, the small group of survivors immediately parted to let them in, shifting to the side as though somehow expecting the three of them to be able to do something, for one of them to be some kind of leader. The three young men slipped through the group to where Sam was waiting, where they found Fry. She was laying still on her back, as though just sleeping, except for the massive pipe that was embedded through her chest, sticking right out the other side of her torso, as though it had been punched straight through her. Xander swallowed again, hard, trying not to puke. Again.

How many times was he going to have to fight puking today?

“Oh, that’s not good.” Dean breathed.

“Oh, Fry… you tried so hard to save us.” Xander murmured, and knelt beside her, reaching up to touch her jaw, gently, trying to give her something of a tribute. She had been a nice girl, in the very little amount of time he’d gotten to know her, and she reminded him of all of the hundreds of people that Buffy had tried to save and failed to. He still didn’t know how, exactly, she managed to deal with the guilt of knowing how many she had failed to save, but somehow, she managed to move on and save people, fighting to save those she could. Maybe Xander could have done something to save Fry, too, though he didn’t know what. _He_ wasn’t a Slayer, he’d been doing everything he could to save the men and women trapped in the cryo coffins… “I’m sorry this happened to- _augh_!”

The sound Xander made wasn’t exactly dignified.

But then again, considering her eyes had suddenly snapped open, and she sucked in a sharp, wet sounding breath, who could really blame him?

“Fry!” He gasped, shocked, and grabbed her hand when she flailed it out, trying to find purchase, squeezing her hand for her. She clutched tightly at his fingers, sucking in increasingly wet sounding, sucking breaths, mouth opening and closing as though trying to find words. “It’s okay, it’s okay, don’t talk, keep your strength… just keep breathing…”

“H-Hades system…” she rasped, eyelids flickering. “No – no shipping… no one lands…”

“It’s okay, just… don’t try and talk.” Xander swallowed hard, and looked up at the others. “Do we have… do we have any chance of helping her…?”

Dean crouched on her other side, frowning slightly as he checked on her wound. “It’s going to be okay, Fry,” he told her, but his eyes were still on Xander, and he shook his head, briefly. No hope, there was nothing they could do, under the circumstances, to help a woman with a pipe through her chest. _Punctured lung_ , he mouthed.

Xander winced, and squeezed her fingers again, making sure that he was positioned to be in Fry’s line of sight, and smiled at her, trying to look encouraging. “Just relax, okay? You’re gonna feel better in a bit, I promise.”

“Did – did I land?” She wheezed, smiling up at him, blood beginning to bubble every time she breathed.

“Yeah, yeah, you landed.” He said, grinning at her, eyes wet. “Didn’t even have to flush the passengers, you did a good job. You saved the ship, Fry.”

“Good.” Fry panted, closing her eyes for a moment, then her teeth grit as she squeezed his fingers even tighter.

“Hey, hey, none of that now, keep looking at me,” Xander said, firmly. “Lookit me, Fry.”

Her eyes opened again, glazed, and she was wheezing as she tried to breathe, determined to meet his eyes, but in excruciating pain. Xander knew the truth, her body was just pumping the last of whatever blood was left in her body out of it, spreading further out over the sand gritted floor, soaking the knees of his pants, and when eventually it would run out of blood, she’d be dead. They were just biding their time, waiting for her death.

Which was a horrifying realization.

“Have we got a first aid kit?” Dean asked, frowning as he straightened up to stand.

“There was one.” A new voice answered, and all but Xander and Fry looked up to see Johns standing in the door of the cabin, a rag pressed to a bloody forehead. “I went looking for it, when I got hit. The whole section where it was has been ripped off the ship. There isn’t much left. I think it’s attached to the section you can see about a couple miles back.”

“It’s okay,” Xander said, softly. “We’re gonna make it through, aren’t we, Fry?”

Dean reached out to squeeze his brother’s shoulder, and said, “Sammy, go see if you can find some water.”

“No, I have to – “

“Get some water, Sammy.” He said, again, firmly.

“I’ll help you, kid,” Johns said, and offered Sam a hand to help him get out of the cabin. “We’ll go find some water.”

“Okay…” Sam didn’t take his hand, though, he just clambered out of the cabin.

Xander squeezed Fry’s hand, and whispered, “Just keep breathing.”

 

\---

 

Dean ran his hand through his hair as he stepped out onto the top of the remains of the ship, then shifted his hand to shield his eyes. The sun was bright, a shocking orange over their heads that was definitely _not_ something he was used to, even though he’d been to dozens of planets in his life. Supposed he was older than he looked, because of all the cryo, froze you in stasis while you travelled, so when you woke up, nothing was any different. What an odd life, he must lead.

The knees of his pants were a bloody mess, but they weren’t nearly as bad as Xander’s.

Apparently this was where the other survivors had congregated, because that was where they all stood, gathering up supplies. Dean stepped towards them, slowly, but his eyes were on the desert around them. Xander had said the map told him that this place was called the Hades System, and looking at it, it felt like Hades. It was scorchingly hot and dry, sand as far as the eye could see, and though he shaded his eyes with his hands and looked out over the desert, Dean couldn’t see any sign of human life. Nothing. Just… the seared track that was left in the sand by their crash, bits and pieces of the Hunter-Gratzner scattered behind them, like a snake shedding its skin. There were still fires smoldering where they had crashed, but he didn’t think those would last. This place was oxygen poor, sand rich.

“Dean?” Sam touched his arm, lightly, and he glanced down at his brother. He smiled back at him, crookedly, and said, “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay.” Dean nodded, and ruffled his baby brother’s hair, gently.

There was more movement behind him, and Dean half turned to face Xander as he clambered out after them, wincing at the sun. “Shit,” Xander said, surprised. “This is… some planet.”

“Yeah.  Looks like we’ve landed on hell.” Dean said, and nudged Xander’s shoulder, lightly. The other young man was covered in Fry’s blood, his hands and arms coated in the dried blood, the knees of his pants dark with it. “Hey. You did good.”

“Thanks.” Xander said, and took a deep breath before looking out over the sandy fields. “So what do we do now?”

“We’re looking for people.” Sam said, confidently. “Johns says Riddick is still running around here, so at least we have _that_ to make things exciting, right?”

“Yeah, real exciting.” Dean snorted, and ruffled his brother’s hair.

“Where’s Caleb at?” Xander asked, shading his eyes with his hands.

“He stayed inside,” Sam said.

“Not a fan of the sun?” Dean guessed, with a smirk.                

His brother shrugged.

“Hey.” Johns stepped up to their little group, grinning slightly. He looked more relaxed than he had, earlier, when he’d walked into the cabin with a bleeding head. Dean thought, actually, that he looked more like he had that first night, when they’d seen him leading his prisoner into the Hunter-Gratzner. Lazy, relaxed. He’d seen men act like that before, he realized, when he saw the way that John rubbed at the corner of his eye. The asshole was on the dose. _Currently_ on the dose. He was on the dose, and he couldn’t have spared something for Fry’s pain? Dean knew as well as anyone else that it wouldn’t have really done anything for Fry herself, other than maybe easing her pain for her death, but for _Xander_ , it would have been so valuable, to ease _Xander’s_  pain by easing hers… “We’re not seeing any other signs of life out there, but if Riddick lived through that crash, we have _got_ to do something to catch him, or he’s gonna end up really putting the hurt on you all…”

“Thought you said he’d eat us.” Dean said, jaw tight. He hadn’t hated anyone in a long time as much as he hated this man right at this moment.

“Yeah, well… if you’re _lucky_ , that’s all he’ll do.” He sneered. “But you’re a pretty one, aren’t you? You might wake up to him skull fucking you, too, so there’s that.”

“Dude.” Xander said, sharply. “There’s a _kid_ here!”

Johns’ eyes flicked to Sam, as though considering what he’d said, for a moment, then smirked, and said, “Yeah, well… he’s pretty too.”

Dean thought it was a remarkable show of maturity and control that he didn’t tug one of the knives out of the back of his jeans and peg it between the fake-Marshall’s eyes. As it was, the only reason he didn’t was because they needed people to get them somewhere safe, with the crash. That, and he sort of figured that the other guys would have a problem with him having done that. Xander had already proved himself to be a good man – under the circumstances, he thought that they should be trying to find as many people as they could trust. Just in case.

It wasn’t that he thought the Riddick was _actually_ going to come and kill him, but they still needed as many as people to keep them safe.

Hell, they could get hit by mercs, right? He’d heard of that sort of thing happening. Mercs coming to capture ships to try and ransom off their passengers, or sell off their cargo. No point, with a ship like theirs, before, because he was pretty damn sure there was next to nothing on it, and beyond pointless now, what with the fact that it was… well, in the shape it was in. But you could never tell. After all, it was a Company ship, wasn’t it? He’d heard of people attacking Company vessels just for the hell of it.

Instead, Dean squeezed his brother’s arm, and tugged him down towards the roof of the original cabin, just wanting to get the hell away from Johns. He just wanted to breathe.

He actually didn’t even mind that Xander followed them.

“I don’t like that guy,” Sam muttered, quietly, as he pulled free of Dean’s arms and headed forward to sit on the edge of the cabin roof, feet kicking out into the air as he looked out towards the sunset, shielding his eyes with his hand. “He’s an asshole.”

“Hm. I’ll agree with you there,” Dean settled down beside his brother, quietly.

“Does he seem _off_  to anyone else?” Xander asked, dropping to sit on the edge of the roof beside Dean, far less gracefully than Dean had sat, and he grinned crookedly at Xander as he did. “Like, I like to think that I’m a pretty good judge of character and all, and he just seems… like he’s hiding something.”

“Yeah.” Dean grinned, pleased with the assessment. “He is.”

Sam leaned heavy on his side, and Dean glanced at him, surprised by the lean. His brother’s eyes were narrowed, and he was considering Xander seriously, then looked up at Dean, and arched a brow.

Clearing his throat, he shoved his brother, and said, “Shut up.”

For his part, Sam cackled, and flopped over on his back, looking up at him with a grin.

“…did I miss something?” Xander asked.

Dean took a deep breath, and glanced at Xander. “Sam likes to think he knows things. A _lot_ of things. And he doesn’t. So. Sam is trying to make some conclusions that are absolute bullshit, got it?”

He considered the younger kid suspiciously.

Sam just grinned at him, with too many teeth, laying on his back with his hands folded on his stomach, confident and casual, the way only a kid could be. Shit eating grin, he was pretty sure dad liked to call it. “Dean just calls ‘em bullshit cause he knows I’m always right.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t _say_ anything.” Xander said, looking sort of suspicious.

“We’re brothers.” Dean said, as though that explained everything.

And apparently it did, too, because Xander said, “ _Aaah_ ,” and left it at that.

 

\---

 

 

Caleb padded through the wreckage of the ship, quietly, picking up pieces of random flotsam and jetsam, hoping that he could perhaps find something useful. After all, if he wasn’t going to be outside, helping with the gathering up of things, perhaps it was better that he be down here, taking care of things.

Hoping down into the cabin, he hesitated, and padded slowly towards where Fry had fallen.

Someone –and yeah, he assumed Xander, because who else would have done it – had removed the pipe from her chest, and laid her out, carefully, on one of the pads that had been ripped out of a cryo pod. He remembered someone saying something about saving those for possibly setting up camp, when night time came, but he couldn’t actually blame Xander for having used one for this. Fry deserved a proper burial. Perhaps someone could dig her a grave.

Crouching beside her, he lightly touched the centre of her forehead, and whispered, “I’m sorry that you had to die for the sake of the balance, Carolyn Fry.”

He sat, for a long few moments, silent. Respecting her life.

Standing, he took a deep breath, and set to work trying to find any possible supplies in the cabin, hoping to find anything that could be used. Supplies, or perhaps water… food would be useful, if he knew where to look.

The long edges of his vest trailed slightly in the sand and broken glass behind him. If only his mother could see him now, she’d likely have a heart attack at what he was doing to the silk. Ah well, it wasn’t his fault he was travelling in a backwards shipping lane in the middle of nowhere because _she_ had found portents that said that this was the way he had to go to maintain balance in the verse. At least he was wearing blue, like his mother usually did, instead of white like his father always had. A little less ruinable, perhaps.

_Now, what was this?_

Caleb crouched beside one of the control panels, and tugged a large black metal box forward, trailing his fingers over the lock. It was, in fact, still locked up tight, but reaching over to grab a handy chunk of metal allowed him to drive it into the lock, breaking it. Not terribly good security, for a Company ship, he thought, but still, it was nice to be able to open the box, and look inside.

There were assorted files, pads of information, the typical things he expected to find on a Company ship. Years worth of passenger and cargo manifests, star charts, records. All the standard paper work.

Pulling up one of the pads, he flicked it on, then began scrolling through the information. Routes the Hunter-Gratzner had taken, over the last ten years or so. Odd, they were all shorter runs, the type a skip would usually take, not a massive ship like this one. This one kept taking short little trips, over and over, the same route. Then suddenly, about twenty-two months ago, they’d changed out the entire crew to replace it with three new ones, a navigator by the name of Owens, a pilot by the name of Fry, and a captain by the name of Anders. Whole new crew out of nowhere, and suddenly they put a ship that had only been doing short skips for a decade on a twenty-six month run.

That, Caleb thought, reeked of unusual.

Reeked of more than just unusual, actually, it reeked of downright suspicious. Frowning, he flicked through some of the files, then tapped the pad tablet against his fingertips, thoughtfully, trying to figure out what this meant. Setting that one aside, he picked up the pad that detailed the navigation reports, and read through the information, silently.

Over and over again, those little jaunts into space, the same trail followed the same time, the sensors constantly pinging off the same stars. Standard, typical information.

The last entry, naturally, was the navigation route for their current trip, to New Mecca. Typical pilgrimage route, a million settlers had followed those routes over the centuries, most of them just taking the hajj like a million others had before, some intending to go home to their own worlds, some intending to join the thriving world that was New Mecca. He knew the route himself, of course, he’d studied it before he left. Tracing the pattern, though, Caleb could see where the line had deviated, where they’d gone off into who knew where. The question was, he wondered… _why_?

Why had the line deviated, why were they sitting in the sand of a planet that seemed to have, by all of their scans, nothing for miles? The communication arrays were destroyed, so they couldn’t call for help, the scanner arrays that would normally let them scan the planet for life were destroyed, leaving them with only bare systems.

They were stranded, and though this route pattern told Caleb that they _had_ , it didn’t tell him _why_.

There was a soft tink, a piece of broken metal tumbling down between the debris, light and quiet and barely noticeable, but Caleb still smirked slightly, and lifted his head.

There was a man standing in the door of the cabin, one hand on the doorframe, the other holding a large pipe by his side, deceptively lazily, as though he didn’t think he needed it. Caleb was fairly sure that at any moment, that pipe could be swung up and slammed into his face with lethal force. And a man as muscled and well built as this man, dressed all in black, he could slam a pipe into your face and crush it in. He was wearing a pair of black goggles that Caleb wondered, idly, where he’d gotten, because when he’d seen him, earlier, trapped in his cryo pod, he’d been blind folded, not goggled.

Made his expression even harder to read, his eyes hidden behind black, mirrored glass, those windows to the soul shuttered.

“I hear you’re a murderer.” Caleb said, though he made no effort to stand up, instead just resting his forearms on his tensed thighs as he continued to crouch, navigational pad hanging limp and lazily from his fingers.

“And yet you don’t seem afraid,” the man said, voice a low rumble.

“Am I supposed to be?”

“Most people are.” He said, and the corner of his lip quirked up, as though amused.

“Do I look like most people?” Caleb asked, finally tossing the pad lightly into the case, with the others. Closing the box, as though this was a perfectly normal conversation, he didn’t even look up when he heard more of those soft tings, clearly unconcerned, and when he did look up again, the man stood just a few feet away from her, that pipe still hanging loosely from his fingers. “I suppose that’s a metaphorical question.”

“So why ain’t you afraid?” The Riddick, the murderer, the Man Killer, asked.

He stood, finally, the silk of his vest pooled around his feet as he looked up at Riddick, curiously. A breeze from outside, as stale as the sand they were trapped on, drifted in through the window, hitting Caleb. It seemed to pass through him, rippling through his skin and clothes as though he was made of water, and for a moment, as it rippled through Caleb, he seemed to look translucent. “Elementals don’t tend to be afraid of anything.”

Riddick lifted his chin slightly, and his nostrils flared. Like a dog scenting a possible threat. “Because you already know everything that’s going to happen, and tend to manipulate it to your own ends.”

“We don’t know everything.” Caleb smirked slightly. “We just like calculating the odds.”

The Man Killer set his pipe aside, and it wasn’t just a casual thing, it was clearly deliberate, letting Caleb know that he was setting it aside. He crossed his arms, then, over his chest, and said, “You don’t smell like the ones I’ve seen before.”

“Mm.” He dipped his head slightly, eyes trailing over Riddick. The boots looked new, like they weren’t quite broken in yet, and the clothes he wore looked more recent, too. Like he’d gotten changed shortly before he had been caught by Johns. Maybe he had done it on purpose. “I’m not full elemental. My mother was human, actually. To hear my father tell it, he was willing to face the fury of his family for her, she meant that much to him.”

“That mean you can’t fly?” Riddick smirked.

“That _does_ mean I can’t fly.” Caleb agreed, and stepped delicately over some of the debris, slippers whispering on the metal floor. “Though, of course, that’s also partially because no elemental can _fly_. Most can glide fairly well. I sink like a stone, unfortunately. A little too human to be truly lighter than air.”

“Interesting.”

“I certainly think so.” Caleb shrugged slightly, and padded through the little cabin, deliberately staying away from the area where Fry was laying. It wasn’t that he didn’t think that Riddick wouldn’t respect the corpse, it was just… that he was protecting her in the same way that Xander had, earlier, as she was dying. “So why in the verse haven’t you already left us far behind, Riddick? As I understand it, you’re a prisoner, you’re supposed to be trying to get away from the man that has captured you, are you not? Perhaps running as far as your legs can take you?”

“What makes you think I haven’t already seen everything there is to see?”

“Because it’s a large planet, Riddick, to have this much gravity.” He answered, confidently, and picked up a battered looking box, considering it thoughtfully. “And I can’t imagine you’ve managed to see all of it, so far. I think you’re sticking close to the other humans.”

“You’re not human.” Riddick said, calmly, and even with the goggles, he could feel the other’s gaze tracking him.

“True. But there _are_ humans here. And we are more likely have water.” He opened the box, peering inside, and pulled out several battered nutria bars, turning them over in his fingers. The wrapping was battered, but still mostly intact, and he sniffed at them, thoughtfully. Yes, they seemed safe.

“There’s no water on this ship.”

“Impossible,” he said, and silently offered one of the nutria bars to Riddick.

There was a moment of silence, as though Riddick was seriously considering him, then slowly the murderer plucked the silver wrapped bar out of his fingers, and tore the wrapper off of it with his teeth. Taking a healthy bite of it, Riddick chewed for a long moment, then said, “There’s no water.”

“No, that is _impossible_.” Caleb said again. “I am very familiar with how these ships work, there is water required to cool the engines, and water required to maintain the temperature in the rest of the cabins, so even with the cryo pods, they require temperature control so that the passengers don’t freeze to death while they’re sleeping in deep space. Even the cryo chemicals are diffused through water, to create steam to put them to sleep. It would need to be processed, but there _has_ to be water… even with the engines destroyed, there are supposed to be reservoirs in back of the cryo pods, in case of emergency…”

“There isn’t.” Riddick said, again, and took another bite.

“There’s no water?” He repeated, stunned.

“No water,” he said, again, sounding as though he was a little frustrated by this line of conversation. “The tanks behind the pods are empty. Not drained, _empty_. They never had water in them.”

Caleb took a deep breath. “That’s unusual.”

“You think?” Riddick smirked, and popped the last bite of the nutria bar into his mouth, balling up the wrapper in his hand. He smirked, and tossed it at Caleb, who didn’t even blink when it bounced off his shoulder. “Almost like someone didn’t want us to have any water, if we crashed on a desert planet.”

“Mm. But how would they _ever_ know we were going to crash?” He pointed out.

“Was that sarcasm? From an elemental? I’m impressed.” Riddick drawled, and crossed his arms again, not reaching for the pipe, which was something of a comforting thing, in a way. “Never seen one of you shifty types joke before.”

“ _Half_ elemental.” Caleb reminded him, and smirked as he padded past him, stopping when Riddick snapped his hand out, lightning fast, and caught his arm. “Yes?”

The bald man leaned closer to him, and Caleb caught himself licking his lips, self-consciously. Riddick took a deep breath, as though trying to memorize the scent of him, then smirked up at Caleb, and he _swore_ he could feel the man’s eyes on him even though he couldn’t see his eyes. Voice a low rumble that he swore he could feel in the marrow of his bones, Riddick said, “Did you account for _this_ in your calculating of the odds, _half_ elemental?”

He swallowed, hard. “If you mean the crash, not exactly.”

“I didn’t mean the crash,” Riddick rumbled, and it made Caleb think very much of a cat purring.

“Was I supposed to?” Caleb whispered, feeling every bit of Riddick’s hand squeezing his arm, tightly, knowing that it was going to leave a bruise, later. Damn the fact that he’d inherited the elemental’s sensitive skin. He wasn’t normally one for paying attention to scents, but Riddick’s caught in the air that curled around him, making a permanent imprint in his mind – a mild coppery tang that reminded him of wood smoke and good whiskey.

“I don’t like when people read my future.” Riddick said, lips against Caleb’s ears as he breathed the words, then his hand was gone on his arm, and the only thing that lingered was the scent in the air.

Gasping – he couldn’t remember ever being out of breath, his entire life, but he was out of breath right now – Caleb leaned on the instrument console, trying to compose himself.

“Caleb?”

He looked up, sharply, and realized that Xander was standing in the door of the cabin, frowning slightly. Concerned. He was concerned for Caleb. Had he seen Riddick?

“Are you all right?” Xander asked, frowning.

“Yes.” He said, and straightened again, smoothing the front of his vest, reflexively. “Of course. Was I needed for anything?”

“Uh… not exactly, though they’re sending one of the others, Zeke, to go dig a grave for the… for the remains of those that didn’t survive.” Xander said, and he smiled, faintly, like he wasn’t comfortable with discussing this, and would rather move onto something else. “How’d the scavenging mission go?”

“Ah… I found some nutria bars.” He tapped the top of the box. “Any luck finding water?”

A dark expression crossed Xander’s face. “There is none. Sort of looks like the tanks were never full, actually. We’re arranging a mission to go out, to see if we can find anything else. The Christers are really convinced that there’s water somewhere out there, and that Allah will provide, so…”

Riddick _was_ telling the truth.

Caleb nodded. “Can I help?”

 

\---

 

“Do you think we should try and voyage out today, or wait until tomorrow?” Dean asked, frowning, hands on his hips. They had already created a shelter of some sort that would work for the night, out of the remains of one of the storage containers, a safe spot just in case nightfall would bring predators. Dean doubted it would, there had been no signs of life whatsoever so far, but there was no way of predicting, really. The remains of the cryo pods had been used to make makeshift beds, and the antiquities dealer – may he rest in peace – had been carrying a lot of items that made life a little easier. Dean wasn’t much of a drinker at this point in his life, but he still had been relieved to crack the cap off of a bottle of Riesling and drink until he didn’t feel parched anymore.

Xander looked up from where he was trying to sort through the few rations they’d found. “How close is it to sunset?”

“Looks close,” he nodded towards the horizon.

“Wait, then.” He answered, and stood, moving to stand beside Dean, offering him a nutria bar. “We have the alcohol, at least, for now, and shelter… it’s good to get water, but it’s not good to push ourselves too hard in this atmo. There’s not enough oxygen for that.”

“Thought one of the others was jury rigging some kind of oxygen dispenser, from the ones that feed the cryo pods?” Dean frowned slightly, though he accepted the bar and started peeling over the silver wrapper.

“Yeah, I think Shazza is? But she said she didn’t want to rush them and screw ‘em up.”

“Makes sense,” he mulled over that for a moment, then tore a chunk of bar off with his teeth, chewing thoughtfully.

“Where’s Sam?” Xander asked, glancing at him, peeling the wrapper off his own bar.

“With Caleb, they’re gathering up bits and pieces.” Dean smiled, leaning on the doorframe of the open storage container, relaxed. “He insisted he had to go.”

He laughed softly, and bent down to pick up one of the bottles they’d gathered, uncorking it. Xander sniffed at the wine, and crinkled his nose, slightly, then sipped at it, quietly. A moment later, he offered it to Dean, who nodded, and took it willingly, swallowing a mouthful of the wine. “Sam’s a good kid. I’m surprised you trusted Caleb with him.”

“I trust Caleb.” Dean said, simply.

“…really?” Xander considered that, frowning slightly. “You barely know him.”

“Yeah, well… he helped you open the cryo pods, didn’t he?”

He blinked, surprised, then nodded. “Yeah…”

“My and Sammy, our pods were in the section that don’t exist anymore.” Dean nodded towards the remains of the ship. “If you and Caleb hadn’t opened the pods and woke us all up, we would both be road jelly somewhere back along the line, because our pods were ripped right out of the ship. You guys saved our lives. I trust you.”

Xander flushed, and nudged Dean’s shoulder, gently. “Thanks.”

Dean grinned back at him, and said, casually, “So… how open are you to awesome ‘thank god we’re alive’ sex?”

He laughed, loudly, and lifted the wine up to his lips, about to drink, then paused. Bottle still pressed to his lower lip, Xander looked at Dean for a very long moment, then lowered the bottle, and said, slowly, “…you’re actually serious, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” He grinned, still lazily pressed against the door.

Xander swallowed, considering that, then said, “Well, that depends. Who would I be having it with?”

Dean scoffed, and snagged the bottle from Xander’s fingers, taking a deep long swallow of the wine, long enough that Xander could watch him swallow several times, then lowered it, leaned forward, and kissed Xander firmly.

He groaned, shivering slightly, and flailed with one of his hands, the free one, as though trying to figure out where exactly to put his hand, and sort of gave up and let it hang limp beside him. Except then Dean dropped the now-empty bottle, and reached up to curl one of his hands against the side of Xander’s neck, the tips of his fingers just catching in the other’s scruffy curls, and Xander really didn’t know what to do with his hand, then, because what he _really_ wanted to do was bury his fingers in Dean’s sandy blond hair and hold on for dear life.

“I’m not made of glass,” Dean breathed, and he could _feel_ him smirking against his lips, so Xander curled his fingers on Dean’s hip, holding on tight, as though just to prove that he too could hold onto him.

Dean started moving forward, and Xander stumbled backwards a little, holding on tighter to Dean to keep from falling over, and let the other move him. After all, as much as he would love to say that he was, Xander _wasn’t_ really an expert in this field – he wasn’t a complete newcomer, hadn’t both Faith and Anya seen fit to get with this? – but fighting the desire to bury his fingers in the hair of a man that seemed quite eager to make out with him was _not_ his usual purview. Of course, being in a space ship that crashed on a desert planet wasn’t exactly his purview, either, and he seemed to be handling _this_ admirably.

He could learn to deal.

Xander’s back thumped against a container wall, and he gasped, out loud. Licking his lips, panting, he said, “You sure about this, Dean?”

“Do I feel like I’m about to change my mind?” He smirked, and ground against him.

“ _Oh_.” His eyelids fluttered, and Xander leaned back against the wall, swallowing hard. “…okay, you’re sure about this.”

Dean smirked, and nipped at the skin under Xander’s jaw, making him buck.

“Oh _god_ …” Xander groaned.

“Are we interrupting something?”

Snarling under his breath, Dean let his forehead drop onto Xander’s shoulder, and said some extremely unflattering things. Finally, though he was still pressed quite close to him, Dean lifted his head, and looked towards the door of the container, and where Johns was standing with his hands on his hips, looking extremely smug. “Did anyone ever tell you that you were an asshole, Marshall?”

Johns snorted, grinning, and stepped into the container proper, dropping down on one of the rough cryo pad beds they’d made. “Your brother tried to keep me out of here, can’t imagine why, hm?”

Dean took a deep breath, then pushed off the wall, and Xander. He did give the other a little smile, though, to try and let him know that it wasn’t his fault. “Where are they at?”

“Out there,” Johns nodded towards the door, digging in one of his belt bags, frowning as he sorted through it. “Try not to get yourself shanked by a murderer while you’re out there, boys.”

“Shouldn’t you be _looking_ for him, by the way?” Xander pointed out, following Dean out the door.

“Trust me, the trap is already set.” Johns said.

“…what do you think that meant?” Xander murmured, a moment later, as they headed down the small sandy hill that the container was lodged on, towards the lines of wreckage. They could just see Sam and Caleb walking through the wreckage, picking up little bits and pieces, and tossing them onto a sledge that the Imam had set up for them, a large but light curved piece of metal, and a rope tied around the front. It had made Sam think of sledding, when he’d first seen it, and sure enough, Sam had slid down one of the sandy hills, laughing. He was being far more responsible with it, now, tossing things that they could use onto the sledge.

“What do you mean?” Dean frowned.

“That the trap was already set.” Xander bent to pick up a small chunk of metal, considering it. Once upon a time, working with Buffy, he’d have tried to repurpose this into a blade. Strange, the sort of things you thought of when you worked with a Slayer. “What do you think he meant?”

“Who knows?” He said, and reached out to brush his fingers over the back of Xander’s neck. “Seriously… If that asshole hadn’t shown up…”

“Yeah.” He grinned back at Dean, crookedly. “Survival sex, right?”

“That’s what I was gonna call it,” he smirked, then dropped his hand as he admitted, “That’s what Sammy thought I wanted.”

“Ah, the silent communication bit.” He nodded. “Your brother thought you wanted to get some of the Xan-man.”

Dean snorted, grinning, and raised his hand in greeting to the others.

Sam waved, cheerfully.

“…is Caleb sort of see through?” Xander said, frowning slightly.

“…he’s sort of see through.” Dean confirmed, brows furrowed. “…that isn’t normal.”

They approached the pair, and Caleb straightened from where he’d been picking up scraps of what had once been a first aid kit. The actual case was battered and torn open, a few more metres away, but the actual contents had been scattered across the sand. “Hello, boys,” he said, holding a bottle of anesthephine.

Xander’s eyes flicked to the bottle. “…that would have been a big help, earlier.”

Caleb smiled faintly, looking down at it. “It would’ve.”

 _Johns’ dose would have been good, too_. Dean thought, then nodded at Caleb, frowning slightly. “You’re not human.”

“What was your first hint?” Caleb said, calmly, and bent to set the bottle on the sledge. “The fact that the wind blows right through me, or my unnaturally good looks?”

Sam snickered, and grinned up at Dean. “C’mon, Dean… he’s just half elemental, it’s not big deal.”

“Oh, no big deal.” Dean frowned, hands on his hips. “He ain’t _human_ , Sammy.”

Caleb smirked slightly. “I’m not evil, Winchester.”

Dean huffed. “Well, I know you’re not _evil_ , I told Xander, I trust you, but… well, maybe you ought to have _told_ us you weren’t human?”

“Are you prejudiced against non-humans?” Caleb asked, sweetly.

“…shut up, rich boy.” He grumbled, slightly flushed, and kicked at the sand.

“Oh!” Sam said, suddenly, making them all turn to look at him. Hands on his hips, he demanded, “Did Johns _actually_ come stomping in there when I told him not to?”

Dean perked back up, redirecting his anger from the perceived deception – which wasn’t _exactly_ deception, since no one had actually _asked_ Caleb if he was not exactly 100% human – to his anger at having been interrupted, and his displeasure with the fake-Marshall. “He _did_ , actually… asshole.”

Xander snorted, and nudged his shoulder. “You like calling him that.”

“He deserves it.”

“Hey,” Sam piped up, heading forward to consider them, frowning slightly. “Do you think the Riddick survived the crash?”

Caleb smiled faintly, looking down at the sledge as though hiding a secret.

“I think if anyone could have survived it, it would be him,” Dean said, frowning slightly.

“Think he actually _is_ lurking around to come skull fuck us in our sleep, or something?” Xander said, frowning slightly. “Cause I mean… I don’t remember ever hearing stories about him, like… _doing_ that to anyone, but… I mean… he _has_ killed a whole lot of people, right? Mercs and killers and stuff, and… they sometimes say that he’s a cannibal and stuff, but… um… I mean… is he?”

“Way I hear it, he thrives on fear.” Dean shrugged.

“The _stories_ about him are _awesome_ though!” Sam bounced, grinning brightly. “Did you know he’s busted out of _three_ _Triple Max Slams_?! Three of them! No one ever escapes from Triple Max Slams, that’s why they _call_ them Triple Max, cause they don’t make ‘em stronger than that. He got out of _Butcher Bay_. You know how _crazy_ that is? Butcher Bay! I mean… there are all these stories, like that he killed a whole army by himself, that he’s some kind of like… animal man or something, like he’s not just a man, he’s crazy and wild and… and just rip your head off with his bare hands! I mean… I would like… I would _love_ to have a conversation with him.”

“I’m not sure people have _conversations_ with the Riddick.” Caleb said, smirking slightly.

“So what, he just kills _everyone_?” Sam huffed, putting his hands on his hips. “I know for a fact that he doesn’t kill _everyone_ he sees, because if he did, there would be no one left on any of the planets he’s ever been on. And he’s been on tons of planets. He’s been in tons of slams, too, and most of the prisoners have been left alive. Or, you know, _prison_ version of alive. So _someone_ has to have had a conversation with him, somewhere along the line.”

“You’re insane,” Dean informed his little brother, ruffling his hair.

“He’s _awesome_!” Sam protested.

“He’s a mass murderer,” Xander frowned slightly, considering that. “Cause… I dunno, that doesn’t seem so awesome.”

“No, but see, that’s the thing.” He said, as Dean and Xander both grabbed the rope for the sledge, and started hauling it towards their storage container home, and the four of them started to walk. “He doesn’t kill kids, and he doesn’t kill just… like… civilians, you know? He kills bad people. Mercs, and… you know, criminals.”

“So he’s a vigilante serial killer?” Dean snorted, amused by his brother’s hero worship of a killer.

“Well, no, but…” Sam frowned slightly, trying to think of the words.

“Besides,” Xander glanced at him. “I thought Mercs were the good guys. I mean, they’re… hunting down known criminals that a bounty has been set out for. That’s a good thing, right?”

“The greed is the creed.” Caleb said, softly.

“Hm?” Xander glanced at him.

The other cleared his throat, and said, louder this time, “The greed is the creed. I’ve met Mercenaries before, there was an incident when I was younger, they put out a bounty on an old family trouble maker… long story short, I had a conversation with one of the men they’d put on the case, and he said, the greed is the creed. Mercs hunt bounties for the money, not because of any altruistic intent. They’re men, who want what men want. They want money.”

"Not all men just want _money_ ," Dean smirked, and Xander yelped as someone - and let's be honest, that someone was definitely Dean - grabbed his ass and squeezed.  
  
"Yes, well..." Caleb smirked slightly, a sort of serene expression, "I'm sure there's something of that involved, too."  
  
"Hey," Sam said, suddenly, frowning as he turned around in a circle, as though trying to look every direction at once. He looked sort of bewildered, like he was seeing something he didn't think he should be seeing, or not seeing what he thought he should be. Hands on his hips, he said, "I thought the sun was setting."  
  
"It is," Dean scoffed, rolling his eyes.  
  
"Then why is it getting _brighter_?" Sam demanded.  
  
His brother almost shot back a smart response, then hesitated, the remark dying on his lips. Sam was right. It wasn't getting darker, now that the sun was setting, it was getting brighter. And the culprit of this was off to what they automatically assumed was the East - it had been ingrained in the human mind that the sun rose in the East, even though they often now lived on planets where it didn't, and the planet upon which it certainly _did_ rise in the East had long been destroyed - where just over the horizon, two suns were cresting over the edge of the rim of the world. There weren't a dull and possibly dying orange like the first sun had been, these two were blue and far brighter, younger stars that thrived on beating down on this godforsaken hunk of sand and rock.   
  
The four of them watched the suns rise, silently, then Xander murmured, "Now we know why this place is so dry..."

  
\---

  
They'd decided to try and get some sleep anyway, even though the suns apparently weren't going to set and they were never going to get a reprieve from the relentless beating down of the suns. It turned out that they had crashed on what would have been the equivalent of nighttime, because with two suns it was even hotter and brighter than it had been before. Still, even though they'd just slept for twenty-two months and could probably stand to be awake for awhile, the crash - and everything had followed - had really taken a lot out of them. So they crashed in their little shelter, everyone finding a place to bed down where they felt safe.  
  
After all, Johns had warned, ominously, the Riddick was still out there. And he would still probably kill them.  
  
So they'd decided to set out a watch schedule, which made Xander think of curling around a fire and staring out into darkened woods in the hopes of spotting some monster's glowing eyes, but when he took watch, it was just to sit just on top of the roof of the storage container they'd turned into shelter, and stare out over an almost-too-bright-to-look-at desert landscape, hopeful that he'd see Riddick before he came to gut them.  
  
There was a little umbrella they'd retrieved from the cargo hold, and he'd spread it out and perched in a chair under it, so that the sun wasn't directly in his eyes, and sipped sort of lazily on a bottle of whiskey. Not too much, because a drunk watch was hardly helpful, but enough to keep his mouth from drying out in the sand. He was supposed to have gone back inside and called someone out to take over for him hours ago, but he just wasn't tired. After everything that had happened, and holding Fry as she'd slipped away, thinking of all of the different ways it could have gone, that maybe she could have lived... he was fairly sure that there was no way he could slip to sleep now, not even if he tried. It would take a few days of wakefulness to finally drive him to the point where his body would simply shut down out of sheer exhaustion, and Xander could get some rest. Hopefully, by that point, he'd be so tired that he couldn't even dream.  
  
There was a soft sound, somewhere out in the sand, and he bolted to his feet, immediately.   
  
Was it...? No, just a rock, somehow dislodged, rolling down the side of the dune. No sign of life, and certainly no murderer. Just a little rock.  
  
Laughing at his own paranoia, Xander flopped down in his chair, grinning, then paused.  
  
Something was off.  
  
He frowned, and sat back up again, gripping the arms of the chair as he twisted to look around behind himself, then in both directions, but no, there was no one there, everything just looked normal. It was the crash, the alien planet, the... the _everything_ , it was just making him skittish and paranoid. Sighing in frustration at his own nerves, Xander flopped back in his chair again, and reached down for his whiskey bottle.  
  
And kept reaching.  
  
He reached so far that his chair nearly toppled over, and he yelped, throwing out an arm and a leg as he struggled to sit up, panting. A moment later, he’d thumped his chair back into place and he felt like an idiot, but at least no one had been out here to _see_ him make a complete fool of himself.

Except that someone was laughing, a soft low rumble of laughter that he barely heard over the wind.

Xander looked up, and he felt his eyes widen.

Dressed in black and looking perfectly comfortable with it considering the fact that they were in the desert and under the beating rays of two suns, crouched the Riddick, the one they called the killer of men, at the end of the storage container. The bottle of whiskey that Xander had been drinking from was dangling from his fingers, and he smirked crookedly at Xander when he noticed that the other’s eyes were on him, and he almost playfully tapped his forehead with the mouth of the bottle, as though saluting him with it.

Swallowing hard, Xander said, “There’s  a boy I know that would love to be in this situation. He really wants to talk to you.”

Riddick smirked, and tilted his head slightly to the side, as though considering that. “Is that so?”

“Oh, yeah, he thinks you’re awesome.” He hesitated, and said, “This is a really weird conversation to be having. Um. Are you going to murder me?”

“Thinking about it.” He said, and took a swallow of the whiskey.

“…but it’s not for sure?”

Riddick smirked slightly, and Xander wished he could see his eyes behind those goggles, to see where exactly he was looking as he said that. “You have a death wish?”

“A lot of people think I do?” Xander said, clearing his throat awkwardly, and wondering just exactly how many stupid things he could say before Riddick shoved that rough knife that was tucked in his pants – because Xander had become something of an expert on improvised weapons, what with the fact that he was the Slayer’s companion most of the time, and he had been forced under many situations to make some of his own, so yeah, he recognized the fact that the other had made a shiv out of a piece of the ship – right between his eyes in an effort to get Xander to shut the fuck up. “Because I mean, I talk like an idiot, and I sort of don’t _stop_ talking, and people think it’s because I’m nervous, and okay, some of it is nervous chatter, but really, I think it’s because my brain just works really fast and I’m always thinking a thousand things, and I just want to try and get them all out, at once. It’s sort of irritating, I guess. I’m told it’s irritating, anyway. So yeah, sometimes I think that people are just going to kill me just to make me shut up so that I stop talking, but really, there are other ways to make me shut up other than just _killing_ me, and – “

He stopped talking when Riddick stood up.

When he was in school, his teacher told him stories about how rabbits would freeze when they perceived a threat, going absolutely still even if they had been seen and _knew_ they had been seen, in the hopes that the predator would lose interest and go away. If they didn’t, the rabbit was ready to bolt, but most of its hope was hung on the thought that _maybe it would just leave me alone_.

Riddick stepped closer to him in the chair, and Xander found himself gripping the arms tighter and tighter.

“I got you to stop talking.”

Leaning back to look up at the convict, Xander blinked, startled by the statement. “…what?”

“I didn’t have to kill you. I got you to stop talking.” Riddick smirked, again, and leaned forward. Xander caught his breath, but the man wasn’t, apparently, driving the shiv into his chest. Instead, he set his hand on Xander’s chest, silently, brows furrowed for a moment, then tapped one of his fingertips on his collarbone. “Rabbit heart.”

He swallowed, licking his lips. _How did he know_ …? “Rabbit heart?”

“Beating too fast.” He grinned, then and slid that hand up to curl his palm loosely around Xander’s neck. He could strangle him with no hesitation, if he wanted to. It wouldn’t even take any _effort_ , Riddick just had to tighten his hands and twist and Xander would be dead, and… that would be it. The killer of men would have claimed another victim. Riddick’s thumb pressed into the soft underside of Xander’s jaw, and when he swallowed again, he could feel the man’s thumb as though it was actually pressing on the underside of his tongue. It didn’t _hurt_ , but it felt… controlled. Like he was under the other’s control, don’t move or be killed, could feel his heart beating against Riddick’s thumb. It _was_ rabbit fast. “Are you afraid of me?”

“I think the only people that _wouldn’t_ be afraid of you would be those with a death wish,” Xander whispered, eyes on the goggles, trying to see the eyes behind.

Riddick smirked again. “You’ve already said you have one.”

“Does that answer your question, then?” He asked, slightly breathless, lifting his jaw slightly.

“No.” He said. “And no.”

“…no?” Xander blinked at him, brows furrowed.

Riddick leaned closer to him, and Xander drew in a deep, startled breath when the grip on his neck simultaneously tightened and the convict’s lips dragged along the edge of his jaw up to his ear, and Riddick breathed, lowly, “I’m not going to kill you.”

Then he was gone, as though he’d never been there, so quickly that Xander actually thought he maybe hadn’t been there to begin with, except that he barely saw the dark clad man drop down over the edge of the container and disappear, and Xander was left sitting in his seat, breathless and startled, gripping the arms of the chair so tightly that his knuckles were white, and fuck, Riddick had taken the alcohol with him.

Son of a bitch.

 

\---

 

The scouting mission was apparently going to consist of Johns and the Imam, if Johns got his way, so Xander and Caleb had both volunteered, though Dean wasn’t sure if they’d done that to try and actually find water or other people, or if they were trying to keep an eye on Johns.

Turned out that none of them trusted him, either.

Which actually made Dean trust their companions more.

Sam had asked if he could go with the others, and though Dean had been reluctant to let his little brother out of his sight – hadn’t John told him to take care of his brother? – Sam had begged, and Xander had offered to guard him. Said that he could stick by his side and make sure that Johns wouldn’t be allowed to be anywhere near him. Xander insisted that he could protect Sammy. And Sam, his little jaw set as he looked up at him, reminded Dean that his little brother _was_ growing up. So he’d tugged his brother aside, demanded to make sure that he had his knife, then sent him on with Xander.

Caleb had given him a sad little smile, when he’d straightened up to watch his brother run over to join them, eagerly, and it grated Dean a little. He liked Caleb well enough, but who knew what odds the elemental had been balancing?

His job, as the one left behind, was to finish digging the graves.

Dean had a breather, one of the ones that the Imam and the woman, Shazza, had been carefully constructing the day before, slung around his chest. He had a tube running from it to his mouth, and he was able to suck on it whenever he was short of breath, and frustratingly, as he dug, he felt often short of breath. The atmo of this planet had oxygen, but not enough for humans to breathe, not properly, so he drew in breaths more often than he would like. Still, when he stopped, he was able to lean back on the shovel, take a few deep breaths to get rid of the breathlessness, then start to dig again.

There were quite a few bodies, to bury. Fry had been wrapped in the blanket that Xander had laid her on, earlier, and there was a tarp wrapped around the others, bodies of those that hadn’t made it through the crash, and they had gathered up to lay to rest. Dean had seen enough of restless spirits in his life, he didn’t really need to see any more of those.

He was standing in quite a hole, by now, the orange sun beating down on their heads, and he straightened again, pressing his hands to his lower back, cracking it.

Really, this ought to be a big enough hole for the bodies that he had to bury. He’d asked Xander if he wanted to be here, when he laid them down, for Fry, but the other had shook his head rapidly, and said that he didn’t think he could do it. It was okay, anyway, Dean had seen more than enough death in his short life. Sometimes it was caused by his father, trying to track down those bastards that had killed Dean’s mother, all those years ago, and sometimes it was caused by others around them, but Dean had seen death. Had seen enough to not be freaked out by it – he just took a deep breath, set his jaw, and dealt with it. Sometimes to just had to deal with things.

Jabbing his shovel at the side of the hole, thinking that maybe he ought to widen it a little, he blinked in surprise when it hit not sand but rock – rock that crumpled inwards, as though it was no more sturdy than an eggshell. It left a gaping hole, one that he tugged his flashlight off his belt and shone the beam inside. He didn’t see any movement, but that was certainly… unusual.

Taking a step closer to the hole in the stone wall, Dean suddenly froze, jaw set as his nostrils flared. “…isn’t nice to spy on people.”

“What the things in that cave have in mind for you isn’t nice, either.”

Slowly, as though trying to prove that he wasn’t trying to use it as a weapon, Dean set his shovel aside, and hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his pants as he turned around to face Riddick. The convict was crouched on the edge of the hole he’d dug, watching him calmly with those damn goggles of his, hands hanging loosely from where he had rested his arms on his knees. Everything about the convict looked _casual_ , which bothered Dean a little. Wasn’t a wanted man supposed to be skittish and nervous? Riddick was neither, he was calm and quiet as he watched him. Taking comfort from the fact that Dean’s knife was remarkably close to his fingers, just in case, he said, “So what are the things in the cave, then?”

Riddick tilted his head to the side. “No idea.”

“So what makes you think they’re dangerous, then?” Dean shot back.

“Fine, you want to go in there, I’m not going to stop you.” Riddick spread his palms, remarkably unconcerned.

He took a deep breath, then said, finally, “You can hear them, can’t you?”

That made Riddick smirk.

“Yeah, okay… fine, don’t answer my questions, but…” Dean frowned, and squeezed his hands on his own hips, just keeping himself calm. “You _can_ , can’t you? Hear them scrambling around down there, claws on stone, making those… sounds. They sound like they’re… hungry. And angry. You can hear them, can’t you? Just… you _can_ , can’t you? Answer me.”

“You already know the answer.”

“They can’t.” He crossed his arms, then, self consciously. “I asked Xander if he could hear them, nothing. Caleb… nothing. Johns… well. We know that Johns can’t hear anything unless it’s his Dose gun calling his name.”

Riddick actually _laughed_ at that, and dipped his head in agreement.

“So why do we hear it, convict?”

“Maybe we’re different,” Riddick said, and when Dean moved towards the edge of the hole to climb out, he thrust out his arm to catch Dean’s, and hauled him up onto the sandy desert floor with him, again.

“…thanks.” Dean cleared his throat, nodding.

“Giving them the dead, then?” He asked, voice level and even as he straightened up to stand beside Dean, and Dean wondered for a moment what _he’d_ look like, that muscly, and decided it was a ridiculous thing to wonder about.

“I’d rather give them the dead than the living.” Dean said, without hesitation.

Riddick nodded, and moved towards the tarp wrapped corpses.

He watched him for a long moment, then followed him, quietly, and silently, they began to work. It might be strange, helping a serial killer bury the dead from a ship crash, but there they were, working together in the oxygen depraved atmo, picking up the dead and trying to give them proper respect for the lives they lived before they had been killed. Riddick even helped him carefully lay Fry down with the others, then they spread the tarp on top, and they took turns shoveling the sand on top of them. Dean even let Riddick use the breather when he was taking his turn at digging.

He probably should have been more freaked out, that after they’d buried the bodies and Dean started heading towards the storage container home camp, Riddick followed him, silently.

He wasn’t, though, and Dean wasn’t sure why.

Flopping on the edge of the door to the container, Dean silently offered Riddick one of the nutria bars, and they sat in silence, eating. He kept glancing at him, out of the corner of his eyes, until finally the convict said, “Something bothering you?”

Dean cleared his throat, and wiped the crumbs of his nutria bar off his lap, then said, “I almost said you weren’t like other serial killers, but then it occurred to me how bizarre and likely to get me killed of a statement that was, and decided not to make it. But then I reconsidered, and… you’re not like other serial killers.”

“Who said I was a serial killer?”

“Your rap sheet.” He leaned back slightly, resting his weight on one hand, considering the dark clad man. “I’ve seen it, before, I’m not just talking about the stories that drift around in the dark. You’ve made a big name for yourself in a remarkably short period of time, especially considering what communication is usually like between planets. But then again, that might have something to do with the fact that you have the highest bounty that’s _ever_ been placed, ever, on your head. So yeah, people tend to sit up and take notice when they see the sheer amount of zeros behind the number on your head. Dead _or_ alive, though you’re worth a lot more alive. You know what’s weird, though? I think it’s cause the Company wants you. I mean, they’re everywhere, right? You can’t live on any of these planets without hearing about the Company. They terraform the planets, they bring us our food, our supplies… so because _they_ want you… every little child knows that the Riddick will come and get them if they’re not good.”

“So I’ve heard.” Riddick said, then reached out to snag one of the half empty bottles of wine, uncorking it, and taking a deep swig from the bottle. He swallowed several times, then finally set the empty bottle down on the floor of the container, frowning slightly. “My reputation is somewhat exaggerated.”

“I figured.” He snorted. “Is it true what the records say, though? You don’t kill good people?”

He shrugged, shifting so that he leaned on the doorframe, crossing his arms as he watched Dean. “Matter of opinion.”

“They call you killer of men.”

Riddick dipped his head, slightly. “So I hear.”

“Hn.” This wasn’t Dean’s thing. _Talking_ wasn’t his thing. He wanted more than to just talk, he wanted to _act_ , wanted to be moving and trying to learn things by _doing_ , he didn’t really find most of the most valuable information he’d learned in his life from _talking_. This was Sammy’s thing, Sammy was the one that wanted to have a _conversation_ with the Riddick and try and figure out what made him tick. Dean had never wanted to just talk to him, his brother had. So he watched Riddick for a long moment, then asked, “So what’s with the goggles?”

The other smirked. “The better to see you with.”

He snorted, and arched a brow. “So I suppose the teeth are better to eat me with?”

“Sure, why not.” Riddick rumbled, his voice seeming to reverberate in Dean’s chest, and he shifted forward, leaning over Dean, each of his arms resting right beside his hips, pinning him to the floor, and said, “Unless you’re looking for something other than eating.”

“Hm. Well. You _are_ just a man after all then, aren’t you?” Dean grinned, rather pleased with that information, and kissed the Killer of Men, firmly.

And Riddick surged into him, knocking the slighter man back onto the surface of the container as he kissed back, all but devouring his mouth like a man that had been starved, and as Dean slid his arms around the other’s neck, curling his fingers against a rough tanktop and scratching at his back, he thought that maybe Riddick had.

 

\---

 

“Dean!”

He looked up, lazily, leaning back in the watch out chair that Xander had set up on the roof of their storage container campout, and lifted his hand when his brother scrambled towards him, grinning. “Heya, kiddo.” He said. “Didja find water?”

“Not exactly…” Sam grabbed the ladder on the side of the compartment, and clambered up to the top of the roof, grinning as he did. “But we did manage to find a town!”

“People?!” He leaned forward, eyes widening.

“Nope.” Sam flopped down in front of his brother, grinning up at him, leaning back on his hands. Sam was panting, but that made sense, because he didn’t seem to have his breather with him, and he was running around the desert like an idiot. “There’s no people. The whole village is empty, there are no people there. But we found the town, and… the Imam thinks he can fix up the old water systems to get us some water, so… that’s something, right?”

“That sure is.” He agreed, and reached out to ruffle his brother’s hair. “How was Johns?”

Sam rolled his eyes. “He was an asshole.”

“Did we really expect any different?” Dean asked, grinning crookedly, and wishing he had anything other than just more and more bottles of booze to offer his little brother, to help him feel better. He did finally snag one of the bottles of wine he’d been sipping at, and offered it to him, quietly. Sam grinned back, but sipped at it anyway. “I mean, the guy is an asshole, assholes will always be assholes, right? But did he do anything stupid?”

“Nothing more stupid than he’s done the rest of the time,” his brother shrugged, sipping at the wine again. “Though he did say something about the trap being laid again, when we were leaving.”

“The trap?” Dean repeated, frowning.

“Yeah, for Riddick. Something about leaving you behind meant that he was keeping the trap ready.”

He shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense. Why would I be a trap for Riddick?” Okay, there was the point that Dean had spent quite a while under Riddick, this afternoon, but that hadn’t happened yet when the scouting party had gone out to find water, and even if it _had_ , how the fuck would Johns have known about that? There was no way he could have known that Dean was probably going to end up sleeping with a convict, but… then again, _Dean_ hadn’t really anticipated sleeping with him either. “I’m no trap.”

“No, you’re legal and actually a boy and everything.” Sam said, innocently, and just grinned wider when Dean glowered at him.

“So how come there’s nothing in the town?” Dean asked, grumbling slightly as he glowered at his brother.

“Dunno, kinda looks like they all just disappeared,” the younger Winchester muttered, and he picked at the laces of his shoes, quietly, frowning. “They didn’t pack up and leave, they just… left. All their stuff is left on the shelves, their clothes are still hanging on the pegs, everything is still there. Toys, everything. I don’t think they meant to leave, Dean, they just… left. They’re just gone.”

“You think they got killed by something?” Dean asked, quietly.

Sam took a deep breath, and said, “There’s something on this planet, Dean. Some kind of animal or something.”

He closed his eyes. “You hear ‘em too, huh?”

“Yeah.” Sam murmured, and his brother’s eyes took on a faraway look, as though considering that. “I can hear them, moving around under the dirt, in tunnels or something… and they don’t sound very friendly.”

“No,” he agreed. “They don’t.”

“I asked Caleb and Xander if they could hear them, but… nope.” Sam shook his head, then finally gave up on picking at his shoelaces and just relaced them. “They couldn’t hear ‘em at all. So when they wanted to go in that Coring Room…”

“Coring Room?” Dean frowned, brows furrowed.

“Yeah… in the town, there’s this building that has a sign on it that says ‘Coring Room’, the Imam says it was probably for mining and stuff, figured he thought that maybe this was a mining colony when they first started it up, because what else were they going to get on a planet like this, right? Even terraformed, it probably wouldn’t be any good for farming, so… must have been a mining world, right? So the coring room is probably where they were digging. Anyway, Xander said something about maybe they’d have tools in there, which, you know, they probably _did_ , but… I could hear them. There are _things_ in there, Dean. Some kind of animal. And… they don’t sound nice.”

He held out a hand for his brother, and Sam bolted up from the roof and curled up in Dean’s lap, resting his head on his shoulder. Sam was fourteen, now, he wasn’t a little kid anymore, but sometimes he was still Dean’s baby brother. Rubbing his back, Dean murmured, “They’re not gonna get you Sammy. If they were going to come and get us, wouldn’t they have done so by now?”

“Yeah,” Sam murmured, quietly, then asked the question that Dean really didn’t have an answer for. “Why doesn’t everyone else hear them?”

“Maybe we’re just special, Sammy.”

“That’s not a _reason_ , Dean, that’s… you just coming up with stupid answers,” Sam muttered.

He smirked, then lowered his head and whispered in his brother’s ear, “Riddick can hear them too.”

 _That_ , as expected, made his brother jerk his head up, eyes wide. “What?”

“The animals under the ground.” He said, with a grin. He liked sharing his secrets with his brother, because Sam was always so damn _eager_ to hear them. “Riddick can hear them too.”

“How’d you know?!”

“He told me,” he said, grinning broader.

“You _are_ a trap for Riddick, you totally saw him, didn’t you?!” Sam slapped Dean’s chest, open handed and good-natured despite his obvious jealousy. “No fair, you knew _I_ wanted to talk to him, how’d you manage that?!”

“Just showed up,” he shrugged, pleased.

“No fair… I wanted to talk to him,” Sam muttered, pouting.

“I know you did, kiddo, and maybe you’ll get your chance. I mean, we’re still on the same planet as him, right?” Dean laughed, nudging him. “And we don’t have a working ship to get off of the planet, do we, so we’re stuck here for awhile longer.”

His brother’s eyes got really big, then. “There _is_ a ship. We found one! It’s little, it’s _really_ little, but it’s in the village, and we might be able to fix it… you’re really good at mechanical stuff, right, do you think you can get it running?”

“…I might.” Dean said, relieved. “I’ll take a look.”

 

\---

 

Xander wasn’t an expert in engines, but he was better than your average outer rim world bumpkin, so he was crouched on the floor of the small shuttle they’d found in the little abandoned village, considering the engine. The engine itself seemed to be in pretty good shape, but the power supply was definitely dead. Maybe they could find a way to jury rig the power supplies from the ship to provide power…?

A hand slid up Xander’s spine, and he shivered and lifted his head, surprised. Caleb smiled faintly at him, but kept slipping his fingers up, burying his fingers in Xander’s hair for a moment. “How’s the engine look?”

He sighed softly, leaning a little into the other man’s touch. “Looks pretty good. Needs power, though.”

“Mm, the power cells on the Hunter-Gratzner appear to still be operational, they could be adapted for that use, could they not?” Caleb asked, but Xander’s attention was really more on the fact that the other man was all but petting him. “Provided we can get the tools needed together in order to do so, of course.”

Xander nodded, and sighed softly. “Yeah, I think we could do that.”

“You all right?” Caleb asked, softly, fingers still carding quietly through Xander’s hair.

“Oh yeah, I’m totally all right.”

“You seem remarkably silent, considering how much you usually talk.” Caleb said, and dammit if he didn’t have a secretive little smile when Xander twisted slightly to look up at him. Damn elemental witch… “What, cat got your tongue?”

“More like an elemental,” he grumbled, mostly to himself, but Caleb clearly heard him, because the witch laughed.

“So how’s the engine looking?”

Xander jumped as though burnt by Caleb’s hands, and wheeled around to face the door of the ship, where Dean was walking up the ramp into the ship. “Ah, good!”

“Oh, don’t stop on my account,” Dean rolled his eyes, and reached up to hit the door release. Unlike most of the other systems on the ship, the doors were designed to work without electrical power, and just used kinetic energy created by pulling the switches, which was mostly designed as a failsafe. After all, if the engines broke, you didn’t want to trap the occupants inside without a way to get out, and you didn’t want to have to destroy the doors just to get _out_ of the ship. So when Dean hit the release, the ramp closed behind him, and he was able to stroll lazily towards them, the bright square of light from the door disappearing, leaving only the front windshield lit up and open. The air inside the ship was stale, but still bright. “So… how’s the engine looking?”

“Intact,” Caleb said, standing beside the control panel, smiling faintly. “Xander thinks it can be fixed if we can drag some of the power cells over from the Hunter-Gratzner.”

“Oh yeah?” He glanced at Xander, who flushed, and cleared his throat.

“Yeah, it looks good, otherwise.”

“Good.” Dean smiled, and suddenly crouched in front of Xander, which just managed to make him yelp and tumble back onto his ass, startled. Dean just grinned, resting  his arms on his own knees, and said, calmly, “You didn’t have to act like you were caught doing something wrong.”

Xander cleared his throat. “Just sorta figured, you know…”

“Because of the interaction the two of you had yesterday, Xander seems to think that he owes you some sort of loyalty.” Caleb said, arms crossed as he watched their interaction, smirking slightly. “Which is ridiculous, really, considering that the interaction wasn’t really completed as it _was_ …”

“…logic is not helping the situation, Caleb,” Xander called, clenching his jaw.

“Well, let’s see if this will.” Dean shifted forward onto his hands and knees, instead of crouched on the balls of his feet, and crawled forward until he was able to straddle Xander’s thighs, pinning him down. He then curled his hands around the sides and back of Xander’s neck, and kissed him, firmly. Xander made a soft sort of sound, confused but not displeased, and kissed the other back as Dean kissed him deeply. It was almost surreal, he thought, really, under the circumstances. In a mostly abandoned ship that had clearly not been used or turned on in probably twenty, maybe twenty five years, after having crash landed on a hell hole of a planet, being assaulted with make outs (okay, it wasn’t assault, he was eagerly welcoming it, but Dean _had_ sort of sprung it on him) as an air elemental _watched_.

Which, naturally, remembering that Caleb was still _there_ had Xander squeaking and lifting his head, breaking the kiss to gasp, “Dean, but… Caleb…”

“Is merely waiting for his turn.”

The air elemental moved faster than any human either of them had ever seen before, as though he was made of the wind itself, and as he curled in against Xander’s back, pinning him between himself and Dean, their hair did ruffle as though there was a wind blowing through the sealed cabin. Curling his fingers over Xander’s hips, Caleb leaned over his shoulder to press his lips to Dean’s, kissing him needily, as though Dean was oxygen, and he needed his lips to breathe. Amazed, Xander watched them, jaw hanging slightly. His brain had sort of gone into holy-shit-hot overload, and he wasn’t actually sure he could _form_ words if he was required to.

It was Dean that broke the kiss first, gasping softly, though Caleb didn’t seem in any way breathless. _Unfair advantage_ , Xander’s attraction riddled mind managed to come up with.

Then Caleb reached up to touch Xander’s jaw, turning his head so that he could press their lips together, now, and Xander groaned into his mouth. Caleb tasted of ozone and electricity, as though someone had curled a thunderstorm into human form, and there was a distinctive secondary flavor, one that Xander found distinctly familiar but couldn’t quite place. It wasn’t until Dean slid his fingers up sides of Xander’s overalls and under the shirt that it kicked started his memory enough to realize that this was what he had tasted yesterday, when Dean had pinned him to the wall and kissed him. He was tasting Dean on Caleb’s lips.

Which maybe shouldn’t be as hot as it was _,_ except that he just sort of twisted to lean more desperately into that kiss, groaning softly.

Dean was laughing softly, which Xander tried to be irritated with, except that the softly laughing Dean was sliding his fingers up to unbutton Xander’s overalls, which he did far more gracefully than Xander had ever been able to manage to do that _himself_ before, and then was sliding them down. Caleb was helping him, too, dammit, which sort of made Xander feel like he was being ganged up on on two sides, but he supposed, considering they both seemed intent on getting him naked for the purposes of… well, he didn’t want to surmise but he was pretty sure he could guess, based on the way that Dean was grinding against his thigh and Caleb was pressing against the base of his spine, then he supposed he could put up with the double teaming. Actually, he could more than _put up with_ it, he could… well, enjoy it, he supposed.

Breathless, he broke the kiss with Caleb to let his head fall back against the elemental’s shoulder, panting, and Caleb began to pepper kisses up and down the side of his neck, instead. Dean seemed to take that as a suggestion, and began doing exactly the same to the other side of Xander’s neck.

“Oh _gods_ …” he groaned, arching up between them, his range of movement limited because of the way they’d pinned him in.

“Oh. We’re going to make you _see_ some gods, all right,” Dean purred, and slid his hands under the bottom hem of Xander’s shirt, pushing it up, until it caught on the underside of Xander’s arms, and he tried to help him get it off, but Caleb was sort of pinning him from the other side, and it was difficult – until Caleb tugged the shirt off for both of their benefit. It was hot, inside the ship, stuffy even, so it wasn’t as though Xander was cold, but he seemed to be goose-pimpled all over. Must be nerves. It wasn’t every guy that managed to get himself sandwiched between two _incredibly_ gorgeous men.

“I’m not sure the gods are enough,” Caleb breathed, running his tongue across Xander’s shoulder, then nipped at the meat of his shoulder.

“No, that’s true.” Dean agreed, and lifted himself off of Xander’s legs so that he could slid the overalls right down his thighs, and tossed them aside, the thick and heavy denim hitting the door with a _thud_. “The gods aren’t nearly enough. Every star in the verse, _maybe_ …”

“Funny,” Xander panted, licking his lips compulsively.

“Oh baby,” Dean looked up at him, green eyes bright, “I’m hilarious.”

Caleb laughed softly, and nipped at Xander’s shoulder again, not quite sinking his teeth into the skin, but certainly leaving little red marks behind to prove that he’d been there. “You left his undergarments, Dean.”

“So I have. How careless of me,” he smirked, sliding his palms up Xander’s calves, over his knees, going the wrong way and making his leg hair stick up on end as he curled his fingers around the waistband of Xander’s underwear – which wasn’t really going very far to hiding anything, anymore, anyway – and met Xander’s eyes. “Ready?”

He cleared his throat. “…yeah.”

“Good.” He grinned, and tugged them down. They caught on Xander’s boots, naturally, because of course nothing could be easy, but a moment later, he got them off, too, tossing them aside the way they’d tossed the rest of his clothes, and Dean let out a long breath, licking his lips as he looked Xander over with hungry eyes. “Mmm. Well, look at that, all laid out for us like a present…”

Xander groaned, squirming slightly, flushed. “Dean…”

“Shush, I’m enjoying this.” He grinned.

He felt terribly out of place in these circumstances, really, all _completely_ naked except for his boots, while Dean and Caleb were both still fully dressed, but he wasn’t really in the mood to complain, not now. So long as this wasn’t some kind of crazy joke at his expense, then he was, well, more than willing to accept that this was actually happening. Because, well, let’s face it, this was basically the material of about a thousand of his wet dreams.

“Let him work,” Caleb breathed, in Xander’s ear, before nipping at the shell of it, teasingly.

Dean grinned at that, and kissed his way down Xander’s stomach, grinning at the way he shivered and twitched with every soft kiss, until he reached Xander’s lower belly and the real goal of this whole exercise. There was no point in pretending that he wasn’t completely into this, because he _was_ , and his dick certainly said the same thing, dark with blood and already slick with pre-come, and when Dean brushed his fingers over his dick, Xander’s hips bucked slightly, sucking in a sharp breath. He grinned broader, pleased with the reaction, and bent to lick a stripe up the base of Xander’s penis.

Xander made a needy little sound, arching again.

“I think he needs you, Dean.” Caleb said, fingers curling on Xander’s hips again, pulling him back so that he was forced to lean on his own chest, holding him tightly. “C’mon… shall we make him fall apart?”

“I’d love to have your help.” Dean said, grinning crookedly, then slid his lips over the head of Xander’s dick, cheeks hollowing out as he sucked him further into his mouth.

Xander groaned, long and low, and tried to press up with his hips, trying to get deeper in that warm wetness, but Caleb was keeping his hips pinned, and there was no way that just some mortal boy was going to be able to pull free from an Elemental that was bound and determined to keep him in place, and he was forced to just stay still and take it as Dean bobbed his head slightly, working Xander’s cock. So, unable to move, unable to do anything but just groan and whine and gnaw on his lower lip, Xander started to do what he did best – he started to talk.

“Oh gods, Dean, right there, oh _gods_ , fuck, oh – son of a bitch, you’ve got a – a mouth like a – like I don’t know what but oh my _gods_ … mm, Dean, that’s so… insanely… good… has anyone ever told you that you’re really good at this? Because they sho~ould! Ooh, yeah, you’re um… you’re really good at this, you could make a lot of money doing this, only, you know, that’s probably not what you want to do with your life because you seem like a together guy, you’ve probably got other plans for your life than just – oooh… than just giving the verse’s most amazing blowjobs, but… son of a bitch, _Caleb_ , you have _got_ to get him to give you one of these, because so help me, this is… oh, but I should probably not be trying to… oh _Dean_ , I’m almost…”

At that, Dean released him with a an entirely obscene sounding _pop_ , and sat up a little, breathing heavily. His lips were swollen and red, slick with spit, and he swiped at his chin with a grin. “Well, we can’t be having that now, can we?”

Xander groaned, deeply, and writhed against Caleb, trying to get free, but he wasn’t going to _get_ free, not like that. “Gods, _Dean_ … that’s cruel…”

“I know, but trust me, you’ll forgive me,” He purred, and licked his lips.

Caleb laughed softly, and when Dean crawled up Xander’s body to kiss him, happily kissed him back. Panting, Xander lay between them, hips shifting slightly with needy little movements, desperate for some friction, but busied himself, instead, with sliding his fingers under Dean’s shirt and trying to unbuckle Dean’s pants. Quite frankly, he was about as desperate to get into Dean’s pants as he was for Dean to get his mouth back to what he’d been doing a moment before.

“Needy, are you?” Dean grinned, and broke the kiss with Caleb to kiss Xander, quickly, just long enough for him to taste himself on his lips, then humoured Xander’s needy fingers by unbuckling his pants, and shoving them down a little.

Groaning, pleased, Xander slid his fingers into the other’s pants, curling his fingers around the other’s dick, stroking clumsily in the confined space of the open fly of Dean’s jeans, trying to make up for his lack of skill with eagerness. Dean didn’t seem to _mind_ , as he groaned softly and let his forehead drop to Xander’s collarbone, trembling slightly.

“Is he distracting you?” Caleb teased, lightly.

“Hand on dick is by definition distracting,” Dean muttered, voice slightly muffled by Xander’s shoulder.

He chuckled, and reached out to touch the back of Dean’s neck, and Xander felt when Dean bucked a little harder into his hands, a shudder running down his spine. “Try not to be so distracted that you forget your purpose.”

“Mmm… right.” Dean panted, and reluctantly caught Xander’s hand, stilling his progress.

Xander whined. “But…”

“Not yet,” he teased, with a smirk, and kissed him again, firmly. “Trust me. C’mon… help me get Caleb naked, huh?”

He hesitated. “…okay, that’s a good reason.”

“Toldja,” Dean grinned.

Caleb finally released Xander’s hips, then, and Xander shifted around to face him properly, biting his lip. The elemental just smiled sweetly at him, not wanting to alarm him, and let Xander push the silken vest off of his shoulders, then tug at the tunic he wore underneath that. Dean, meanwhile, was pulling at Caleb’s silk trousers, and tossed them the same direction he’d tossed the other’s overalls, and within moments, the two of them had Caleb completely bare. Considering Dean was still mostly dressed except for his lowered pants, and Xander was still wearing his boots, it was pretty impressive to get Caleb completely bare. He was paler than the others, as Xander had been darkened by the summer sun on his home planet, and from Dean’s stay on the same world for awhile, he had sun freckles splashed across his nose. Naturally, they were all paler than they usually were, by nearly two years spent in Cryo, but their traces of colouring were still left.

“Oh…” Xander breathed, brushing his fingers up Caleb’s chest.

“You get a man like this _completely_ naked, and all you can think is to grope his chest?” Dean snorted, and nipped at Xander’s jaw to show that he didn’t mean any real insult by it, he was just teasing.

He flushed. “I was tying to not seem like a horny jerk?”

“You can be a horny jerk,” Dean murmured, kissing the spot he’d just nipped at, and tried to guide Xander into standing up on his knees, without actually giving him words, just tugging him up into position. Caleb moved up without any hesitation, curling his arms smoothly around Xander and Dean’s waists, simply, holding them in place.

The three of them formed a tight little triangle of flesh and warm breath that actually managed to fog up the windshield, and Xander’s breath kept catching every time that their hips shifted and their dicks would bump against each others.

Only that, apparently, was the whole point. Because Dean reached between the three of them, grinning, and said, “I’m gonna need a couple hands.”

Xander swallowed. “…you’re not planning what I think you’re planning, are you?”

“Oh yeah,” he grinned.

Slowly, Xander offered his hand, then Caleb offered his own as well, and the three of them curled their fingers around all three of their dicks, and they began to jerk all three of them together, an awkward sort of orgy of masturbation that somehow managed to be a thousand times better than it _sounded_ because there were three hands working together, and their dicks were helping, slicked by their own pre-come, leaning on each other as they panted and gasped and Xander let out another series of muffled expletives and nonsense phrasing as he bit Dean’s shoulder to keep from just… _screaming_.

It was actually sort of funny, in retrospect, but it was Caleb that lost control first, crying out softly as he came between their hands, spilling over both his and Xander’s chest and Dean’s shirt, in the close proximity.

Xander laughed, breathlessly, then his laughter turned into a soft, helpless groan as he came moments later. Of course, then he was disappointed that Dean hadn’t managed to come as well, and exchanged a grin with Caleb before the two of them turned on Dean. He, naturally, hadn’t been expecting it, and yelped in surprise as they pushed him down onto his back, then the pair of them dropped down to start trying to get Dean off with lips and tongue. Caleb was laying open mouthed kisses up and down the length of Dean’s shaft as Xander sucked at the base, right where it met the rest of Dean’s body. It didn’t really take long, after that, for Dean to let out a short, strangled shout, hips bucking as his spine arched and he came, awkwardly, mostly on Caleb’s face.

The elemental leaned back, laughing softly, and blinked. “I think it’s in my eyelashes.”

Laughing loudly, Xander dropped down beside Dean, on the ship floor, and grinned up at Caleb. “It’s in your eyelashes.”

“Lovely,” he muttered, picking up his vest, and using an edge that hadn’t dragged in the sand too much to wipe his face clean. “Well! _That_ was certainly enjoyable.”

Dean grinned. “Best sex I’ve had in… well, hours.”

Xander blinked owlishly. “…I think we were just insulted.”

“Well, I’m not sure that was an _insult_ , but… it was an _unusual_ statement.” Caleb agreed, settling down on Dean’s other side. “Planning on telling us who, exactly, your best most recent sex was with?”

“What, shouldn’t you have known that?” Dean smirked at Caleb.

“I calculate the odds, I don’t actually see the future,” he smirked, and brushed his fingers over Dean’s scruffy dirty blond locks. “So, are you going to tell us, or do we need to torture it out of you?”

“…is it the sexy kind of torture?” Dean mused for a moment.

“Naw, just the peeling off all of your skin in little strips kind of torture.” Xander said, smirking.

“…right. Not the sexy kind, then.” He cleared his throat. “Well. The options are fairly limited, aren’t they? There aren’t a lot of survivors left, and… everyone but me left on the water finding expedition.”

“… _masturbation_ was better than sex?!” Xander squawked.

Dean rolled his eyes.

“He means Riddick, Xander.” Caleb said.

He blinked at that answer, too, then twisted so that he could brace himself over Dean, a hand resting on either side of the other’s shoulders, and he demanded, “He tried to get all… flirty up on you too?!”

“ _Too_?” Dean sat up, sharply, which made Xander sit back so as to not get hit when he did. “Wait, he did that to you?”

“Well, he didn’t _sleep_ with me, no, but…” Xander cleared his throat. “He may have said and done some things that would have indicated to me that… perhaps he wouldn’t have been _against_ sleeping with me?”

Dean looked torn by this information, so naturally Caleb made it even more conflicting by saying, simply, “Me, as well.”

“So what, he just flirted with _both_ of you?” Dean scowled.

“Bit rich, coming from the guy that actually _slept_ with him,” Xander rolled his eyes.

“I’m not sure you’re allowed to feel jealous considering you just had sex with two other people. And Riddick, actually, a few hours ago.” Caleb smirked, trailing his fingertips through Dean’s hair, still. “So unless you’re planning on trying to bring Riddick into… well, whatever you want to call _this_ …”

Dean arched a brow, frowning slightly. “Not a bad idea, actually.”

“You know, I’m going to find it hard enough to rationalize the thought that I just had sex with two guys,” Xander groaned, flopping so that his head rested on Dean’s collarbone. “I’m not sure I’d be able to rationalize the idea of having sex with three guys, one of which is a serial killer.”

“Well, he’s not like _other_ serial killers,” Dean tried.

Caleb laughed.

“…yeah, he laughed at that, too.”

 

\---

 

It was Johns, in the end, that didn’t listen to what a fervently earnest Sam Winchester had said, and went into the Coring Room.

He didn’t – to Dean’s eternal disappointment – get killed. But he did get injured, and tumbled out of the building clutching at his bleeding forehead and howling about creatures that were going to kill them. The animals he had tumbled upon were babies, an angry Sam had yelled as he jabbed his finger in his chest, and wasn’t he bloody lucky that he hadn’t actually faced some of the big ones, I _told_ you not to go in there because that’s where they _live_.

Only Johns hadn’t been the only one to go inside.

The prospector couple, Shazza and Zeke, good sorts, Dean had thought, rough around the edges but honest, had been with the fake Marshall at the time. Unlike the blue eyed bounty hunter, they hadn’t stumbled free, mostly unharmed. They had been torn apart. Killed because Johns was too damn foolish to listen to those that knew better than he.

They’d buried them in the sand just beyond the little village, in a shallow grave that all but Johns had taken a turn in digging, and the Imam had blessed.

Only after Johns had inadvertently opened it up, Caleb had suggested that maybe they should make sure it was clear. If nothing else, Xander’s original suggestion of getting tools out of there might not be a bad one.

There was no sign of the animals, when they’d stepped into the Coring Room now. Johns must have scared them off, or something, so they slipped into the quiet room, and began gathering up any possibly useful tools. Johns was understandably skittish about coming back into the room, but he lurked near the doors with their only gun in hand, frowning as he watched, ready to shoot if another of those damn things came flying in.

“Does someone have a flare?” Xander said, suddenly.

Dean frowned, and leaned over the control panel that was set up around the massive hole in the middle of the room, presumably where all the digging was done. Pressing down into the core of the planet to get the minerals that the original settlers had been sent to this planet to get in the first place. Xander was crouching on the edge of the hole itself, frowning down into the depths of the darkness. “What are you looking for _flares_ for?”

“Humour me,” he smirked, twisting to look over his shoulder at Dean, and winked.

Dean rolled his eyes, then called, “Johns! You got flares?”

A moment later, he offered it to Xander, who lit it up, and tossed it down into the hole. The flare tumbled, end over end, into the depths of the darkness, and as it did, it threw up sharp shadows and lights over the strange lines and angles of the sides of the hole. They weren’t rocks, lining the hole that sunk down into the planet’s death. They were grinning skulls, the bones of the dead, rib cages caught on stones like macabre chandeliers hanging down. When the flare landed at the very bottom, it wasn’t landing on rock, either, it was landing on the remains of skeletons, some large, some small, all human.

Xander let out a shaky breath, and whispered, “I don’t think the settlers left this planet.”

“I think you’re right.” Dean said, frowning.

“What is it?” Johns demanded.

Looking up, the Winchester answered, “Those animals that attacked you, Johns? They also killed all of the people that used to live here. They must have locked themselves in here when the animals started attacking, and forgot about the hole in the middle that comes up from underground. We’ve heard the animals moving around under there, that must be where they live.”

“Yeah, you keep _saying_ you’ve heard the animals moving about down there, but none of us have heard that.” Johns crossed his arms.

“Perhaps we should take what they say on faith, Marshall Johns.” The Imam said, quietly, peering over the edge of the instrument panel down into the hole itself. “As they seem to have been remarkably accurate in their realizations, thus far. To me, this looks like the remains of an animal massacre. All settlers killed. If they believe it is due to the animals under the surface of this planet – which you _yourself_ have been attacked by – then I would imagine that they are correct.”

“The thing is,” Xander spoke up, “Is that we’ve been on this planet for, what, three days now? They haven’t attacked us. Why?”

“They live under the surface,” Caleb said, stepping forward, peering down into the hole. The flare was still burning, still throwing the skeletons into sharp black and green relief. “Where it’s dark. And now that it’s bright in here, they’re not here. Maybe… maybe they only go where it’s dark.”

“This planet has three suns.” Johns scoffed. “It doesn’t _get_ dark.”

Caleb frowned. “Maybe sometimes it does.”

 

\---

 

“This would be _so_ much easier if we had any idea where we were…” Xander groaned, leaning back in his seat. He had all the star charts for this region of space – or rather, what they _thought_ this region of space was – spread out in front of him on the old instrument panel of the Hunter-Gratzner. The instrument panel itself was dead even though there was still power in the ship itself, because the wires had been severed during the crash. Disappointing, really, because he was pretty sure that having a working instrument panel would actually help more. If nothing else, maybe they could scan the area and _find_ where they were. “But it’s too bright out there for us to be able to check the stars, and the navigation went wonky before we crashed…”

“There are navigation reports, actually,” Caleb retrieved one of the pads that he had found earlier, just after the crash, offering it to Xander. “Does this help?”

“Oh god, you’re a lifesaver.” He groaned, snatching it and leaning forward to check the maps. “I could kiss you.”

“I wouldn’t complain,” Caleb teased.

Xander hesitated, then smirked and leaned back in his chair to grin, upside down, at Caleb. “C’mere then, air-boy.”

The other laughed, and leaned over to kiss Xander lightly, upside down, then stepped back to let him work. Xander was silent for a few long minutes as he checked the maps against the records of their route, continually looking back to check and see where exactly they had gone off of their route to New Mecca, and finally said, “It’s called the Hades system, which I actually knew because the computers told me that before we crashed and they went _haywire_ , but now I can actually tell you were in the damn verse that Hades _is_.”

“And where is that?” Dean asked, as he dropped down into the cabin, walking over.

“Middle of fucking nowhere?” Xander looked up, and shrugged. “No, not exactly, but it’s well off of shipping routes. We’re sort of actually are in the middle of nowhere. Looks like at one point, they tried to terraform a few of the planets in this area, not this system, but the nearby systems… but there are no known populated planets in this area. We’re _months_ away from the shipping lanes. Even if we had some way to call for help… and we don’t, because our communication arrays were destroyed and there’s nothing we could find in the village… it would take them months to get here. They must have survived on scheduled drops here, because there’s not even a way that the settlers could have called out for help.”

“Do you think anyone knows these people are dead, then?” Dean frowned.

“Well, how long have they been gone?” Caleb pointed out. “If it’s been only months, perhaps the next scheduled drop will still be coming, and we can get a ride out of here when they come to provide supplies to people that are not here anymore. So long as we can ensure that we can stay out of the way of those animals…”

“I’m sorry.” Dean held up his hands. “But those people have been dead a long time.”

Xander twisted to look up at him, blinking. “How do you know?”

“Because this planet is filled with the scent of _old_ death.” Dean said, quietly, running his hand through his hair. “And nothing of life. There hasn’t been human life here in… in a long time. I can tell.”

“And how _can_ you tell?” Caleb asked, quietly. “It seems unusual.”

“Guess I’m just special.” He smirked, which was the same answer he’d given Sam, and just as it hadn’t actually placated his brother, it didn’t placate the others. At their skeptical expressions, Dean sighed, and threw up his hands. “I don’t know. I really don’t. I’ve just always… been able to tell things by scent and sound, and… my mother used to do it. When I was little, she would sit with me, and tell me to see if I could figure out where birds were in the trees based on the sounds of their wings beating. She would hide in the house and I had to find her by her heart beat, without moving from the spot where she’d set me. When she was pregnant with my brother, I used to be able to hear both of their heartbeats whenever I was in the same room as them. I knew when he was _sleeping_ in her belly, because his heart beat would slow down. It’s not _normal_ , I know that, I know, but… it’s all I know.”

“That’s… sort of awesome though.” Xander said, clearing his throat.

“Maybe.” Dean smiled faintly. “Only I think that’s why they killed her. Because she was… not like other people. She could hear things people couldn’t hear, see things, smell things… I was born on this planet that was dark, all the time. Always dark. Like just after twilight, constantly, and my dad… my dad would trip over _everything_. Mom used to laugh at him for it, because she could see in the dark.”

“Can you see in the dark?” Caleb asked.

“Naw… well, yeah, I mean… better than you guys, probably, but not better than her. I couldn’t hide from her, she could always see me.”

“Was she not human?” Xander asked, frowning.

Dean hesitated. “Maybe?”

“Hn. And you were concerned that _I_ wasn’t human, once upon a time,” Caleb said with a faint smirk, and reached up to trail his fingers across the back of Dean’s neck.

“Yeah, well… I learned my lesson.” He smirked.

“So how come your mom could see in the dark, but your dad couldn’t?” Xander asked, twisting to turn to face the pair of them, one of his legs tucked up under himself, his arms crossed across the back of the seat.

“They from different planets, actually.” Dean shrugged. “Mom was from the planet we were born on, the dark one. Dad was from Helios Prime, New Mecca. Mom used to tell me stories about how dad came to our planet for a bounty of all things, cause he was a… wanna-be merc for a while there, and he ended up never leaving. Said he was too in love with my mom to go back to the light. But… there’s nothing there, not anymore.”

“What happened?”

“The planet was attacked.” He said, leaning on the edge of one of the instrument panels, taking a deep breath. “I was only a little kid, I don’t remember a lot of it, but… I remember these men… in black armour. They stormed our town, just… killing _everyone_. My mother fought them to protect us, I remember her fighting them, then my dad put my brother in my arms and told me to run until I didn’t see soldiers anymore, promised he’d find me. He ah… he did find me, later, just picked us both up and ran for the ports and got on a ship, I don’t know where we went from there, I lost track of all the places we’ve seen since then. My mother didn’t get off of our planet. She was killed, trying to keep her family safe.”

“What happened to the rest of the planet?” Caleb asked, quietly.

Dean shook his head. “Gone. The planet’s still there, but it’s… empty. There’s nothing there. No one is left.”

“How can anyone… kill an entire _planet_?” Xander gaped at him, stunned.

“You’ve never heard of the Razing of Furya?” Dean asked, smiling grimly, without humour.

“ _Oh_.” He breathed.

Of course he’d heard of the Razing of Furya, it was covered in history class, when he’d been in school. The Furyans were mostly forgotten about, now, but once upon a time, the way he had heard it in school, they were the warriors of the verse, fighting wars for planets and peoples that didn’t want to actually risk their own people and their own resources. The Furyans were known for loving to fight, so the stories went, were warlike and violent and even bloodthirsty. No one knew, exactly, who had razed the planet, because historians were mostly just shocked that it had _happened_. The most warlike race in the verse, and they’d been wiped out in a single night.

“So…” Xander cleared his throat, and bit at his lower lip for a moment, considering that. “…are you a Furyan, then?”

Dean sighed softly, and nodded. “Yeah. We’re Furyans. Or… half Furyans, I suppose, since my father was from Helios, but… yeah. Don’t tell anybody.”

“Don’t tell anybody?” Xander repeated, laughing slightly.

“Yeah, don’t tell anybody.” He frowned, not as amused by it as Xander was, apparently. “Because they killed every Furyan they could find, okay, and I was a child at the time, it happened a long time ago. Twenty five years ago, they killed my entire planet, wiped them right out, and my brother and I have spent _years_ travelling from one planet to another trying to keep hidden. If it weren’t for Cryo, he’d be a man already. And Sam _doesn’t know_. He doesn’t remember Furya, he doesn’t even remember our mother. I don’t want the same bastards that came to our world and killed my mother and everyone I’d ever known in one fell fucking swoop to figure out that I and Sam still live. Because you know what? I sort of think that if they’re still out there… they sort of want to make a clean sweep of it. No Furyans left anywhere. Kill us all. And my mother gave me a job, before she died. That job was to take care of Sammy. So yeah, _don’t tell anybody_.”

Letting out a shaky breath, Xander nodded. “Right. Don’t tell anybody.”

Caleb curled his arm quietly around Dean’s waist, a silent bit of solidarity, and Dean cleared his throat, closing his eyes for a moment.

For a long few minutes, there was awkward silence in the old cabin of the Hunter-Gratzner, the three of them silent as they tried to wrestle with their own thoughts. Dean was thinking about the look in his mother’s eyes, when she used to sit on the edge of his bed at night, and sing soft little songs in a language that he remembered speaking as a child but wasn’t sure he could understand if someone spoke to him in it, now. Thought about how she used to whisper to him that he needed to take care of his little brother, because Sammy wasn’t as big and strong as he was, yet, and how he was his momma’s little warrior. Caleb’s thoughts were lost on his own mother and father, about how maybe Dean’s father had felt like his mother had, a stranger in a strange land, held there by love only. He knew that his father had been frustrated with the silently passive aggressive treatment that his mother had gotten, so he’d gathered up Evelyn and Caleb and taken them to a human world, where it would be easier for them, if not harder for himself. His father had worked so hard to keep them safe that he’d given away bits of his own power, little by little, until he had finally become one with the wind itself. Maybe, he thought, Dean’s mother had felt like his father had, trying to keep her beloved, her children, safe, and like Caleb’s own father, she’d lost her life trying to do that. Xander’s thoughts were confused, whirled up in the thought that he didn’t honestly know if his parents, as much as he loved them as his parents, would have ever actually done something as noble as dying for him – and he honestly had to say that he didn’t think they ever would.

Then Dean cleared his throat, and said, “So how, exactly, did we end up on the Hades system, then?”

“Ah…” Xander cleared his throat, lifting his head. “Right. Well… I don’t know. I mean, it seems crazy, right, that we go off course and manage to land on the one planet that has absolutely no life… but I guess maybe if we had started drifting, _eventually_ we would have hit something.”

“Maybe not.” Caleb pushed off of the instrument panel where he was leaning beside Dean, and headed over to where Xander was sitting. Picking up the pad that showed exactly how their route went, he held it up so that both of the other men could see. “Look at this. This is where we went. Now… if we had gone off course a week before, we would have, based on this trajectory, bumped into the Poseidon system, where there are many populated planets, they harvest fish there. If we’d gone off course a week later, we would have bumped into… here we are… the Jackal system, which has populated planets.”

“Yeah, the merc world is there,” Dean frowned, brows furrowed.

“Precisely. We didn’t get off course anywhere that we could have bumped into a populated world. How odd.” Caleb tapped the screen. “We went off course at _exactly_ the right moment to crash land on a planet that has _no_ life. If we had just passed getting pulled into the atmo of Hades, we would have kept going on the same route and eventually reached the Osiris worlds. The timing required to get us crashed on _this_ planet… the chances there are astronomical.”

Xander narrowed his eyes, then said, “Do you think they made us crash here on purpose?”

Caleb shrugged slightly, folding his hands in front of him, holding the pad. “It’s impossible to say, without some kind of proof, but… it certainly seems to appear that way to me.”

“But why would someone deliberately change the route to make us crash on a… well, on _any_ planet?” Xander frowned.

“Well, who has the authorization to do it?” Caleb asked, softly.

Dean frowned. “…the Company. _Only_ the Company. No one else has the access or authorization to change the routes of Company ships, but… why the hell would they want to get rid of one of their own ships?”

“…Riddick’s bounty was put out _by_ the Company.” Xander said, looking up.

The others looked back at him for a moment, then Dean whistled, lowly. “You think they would actually destroy one of their own ships, and kill forty passengers, and three crew members… all so that they wouldn’t have to pay out on the bounty for Riddick, if he was brought in by Johns?”

“The crew were new.” Caleb nodded towards the container where he’d gotten the pad he was holding from. “I checked the ship’s manifest, they were all new. Never worked for the Company before, all new. The sort of people they wouldn’t be heartbroken to lose. And they’d get our fares… they’d probably refund those to our families, give them a small amount in apology… and the Company would be rid of Riddick. Just like that.”

“Yeah, but they’d lose a ship!” Xander yelped.

“Have you _seen_ this ship?” Dean waved a hand around. “It was a piece of shit, _before_ it crashed. No huge deal to replace a hunk of junk like the Hunter-Gratzner.”

“There’s also the issue of its missions.” Caleb nodded. “I was checking its previous routes, it did a lot of short jumps, before. Nothing long term. So suddenly it stops a route it’s been on for _years_ , for _one_ long trip? And on that one long trip… it’s destroyed. Seems odd, doesn’t it?”

“Seems suspicious.” Dean agreed.

“Do you usually find the Company suspicious?” Xander asked, with a faint smirk.

“I tend to find everyone suspicious.” He agreed, with a matching smirk.

“Even me?” He shot back, sweetly.

“Especially you. Fortunately, I’ve been convinced to trust you by your willingness to get naked with me.” Dean said, and just grinned wider when Xander burst into laughter. “So the Company has a ship they they’ve probably been using for some kind of delivery routes… weapons, drugs, something. They get word that Johns, who is _not_ a Marshall, but probably a bounty hunter, has caught Riddick, and needs a secure prisoner transport vessel. There aren’t many of those. So they think, hey, two birds, one stone, quick toss a secure prisoner cryo unit into the ship they need to get rid of, and send the Hunter-Gratzner to the planet _he’s_ trying to get off of. The ship must have been close by, so they must have thought it was _perfect_ , serendipity coming together. Get rid of a thorn in their side, and get rid of the ship.”

“So that’s why there was no water on the ship,” Xander murmured, quietly, frowning. “Why the first aid kit wasn’t stocked fully, why there were no emergency supplies… why Fry couldn’t get the air brakes to work.”

“They crippled the ship.” Caleb said, softly. “On the off chance that we would actually survive the crash.”

“Looks that way,” Dean sighed.

“Well… that’s screwed up.” Xander groaned, running his hand through his hair. “So how do we get _off_ this planet?”

“Shuttle’s our best chance.” Dean admitted. “Repair it, fix up the wings, get the power sources plugged in, and… hope to all hell that it’ll carry us off planet, and far enough to get into the shipping lanes. At that point… the short range communication systems seemed to have been working, so we… hail a freighter and… hope they’ll get us somewhere.”

“That’s a lot of maybes and hopes.”

“Well, get the elemental to weigh the odds of our success.” Dean smirked, and laughed when Caleb just sort of rolled his eyes.

 

\---

 

Johns was skulking.

Dean wasn’t really sure he had another word for what the pretend Marshall was doing, he was just lurking around the edges of the little village, frowning as he did, his rifle in his arms, cradling it like a baby, tapping at the stock of it. The Imam had got the water going, so at least they weren’t weak and dehydrated anymore, but the few nutria bars they’d had were running dangerously low – yet another sign that they weren’t meant to survive this crash – and though they were no longer thirsty, they were all certainly weak with hunger. There was no vegetation here, so there wasn’t really anything to eat. Still, Johns prowled around the edge of the village that they’d set up camp in – it was more comfortable here than it was back in the wreckage of the ship, or the storage container, because at least they had beds and things here – as though expecting that Riddick would just sort of walk into his hands.

Shaking his head, Dean flicked the shutters closed, cutting off the sunlight and his view of Johns, both. Sam and the Imam were working on the wings of the shuttle even though Dean had reminded his brother, as gently as he could manage, that maybe he should be getting some sleep during the ‘night’, but his geekboy brother was having a very serious conversation with the Imam about Allah, and the Imam had offered to look after him for him.

Let his brother have his crazy thoughts. Dean couldn’t believe in a god that could let what had happened to the Winchesters happen. Not without proof that he was some kind of sadistic bastard, anyway.

Padding back across the room, Dean was about to slip back into the bed, where Caleb and Xander were already tumbled, tangled together as they slept, when he froze.

In the darkness, there was a glint in the shadows, the corner, and Dean straightened his spine, presenting less of a target and wishing he was wearing more than just his socks. There was someone in the corner, he could see them, could _hear_ their heartbeat, thumping faster than normal. Either this was someone who was afraid, or someone that had a heart beat faster than the average human. Dean took a deep breath, then said, “I _must_ be hungry. I almost missed you there.”

Riddick stepped forward out of the shadows, silently. His goggles weren’t on his eyes anymore, they were up on his forehead, which made sense in the darkness – no one needed mirrored goggles in a dark room – but his eyes weren’t human. They caught the faint glints of light from the edges of the window, the very thin lines between the shutters, and seemed to almost glow silver, like a cat’s in the dark.

Dean licked his lips, and whispered, “My mother had eyes like yours.”

Those silver eyes narrowed for a moment, then he said, “The mother that lived on Furya, saw in the dark, and taught you to track by heartbeat?”

He smirked faintly. “I should have known you’d have been listening in. Hear anything you liked?”

“Heard a lot I recognized.” Riddick said, instead, and moved towards him, slowly, stalking like a cat would stalk a mouse, his boots barely making a whisper on the sandy floor. “You know how I came into the world? I didn’t have a mother to teach me how to hunt. I was found in a dumpster behind a liquor store, on Furya. My umbilical cord was wrapped around my throat to choke me, but somehow… I lived. Think maybe the same people that tried to kill you tried to kill me?”

Dean swallowed, licking his lips. “To be honest? Yeah… I think it probably was.”

“That’s what I thought.” Riddick said, calmly, and kept walking, crowding Dean back. Dean kept backing up until his back made impact with the shutters, and he found himself pinned when Riddick pressed his palms to the shutters on either side of his shoulders. “Interesting, isn’t it?”

“Did you hear the part where we thought that the Company crashed our ship and killed most of the passengers just to try and kill you?” He breathed.

“Yeah, I did.” Riddick tilted his head to the side, those silver eyes on Dean’s face. “Should I feel guilty?”

“Well, you didn’t crash us, did you?”

He smirked. “I can pilot, but no… I didn’t do it.”

“Then no, I don’t imagine you should feel guilty.” Dean said, with a little shrug. “Well? You’ve got me pinned… going to do something about it?”

“If we’re from the same place, then you should be able to get yourself unpinned quite expertly.”

“Probably could, too.” Dean smirked, “Except that the others are sleeping, and I don’t really want to wake them up with the sounds of bloodshed and all. Because let’s be honest, there would be bloodshed.”

“Confident, are you?” Riddick grinned, wolfishly.

“As a matter of fact…”

Riddick moved quicker than Dean had expected, but that was probably because he wasn’t moving quite the way that Dean had thought he was going to. He didn’t attack, he didn’t try and pin him further, he didn’t reach for the shiv at his waist. Instead, Riddick tugged Dean forward as though he was _hugging_ him, then twisted, and threw him.

Dean was rather relieved that he didn’t manage to yelp and sound like an idiot, but he _did_ let out an _“Oof!”_ of surprise when he landed on the bed, right on top of Caleb and Xander.

 _They_ yelped.

“What the hell – ?!” Xander started, then paused, blinking. “Oh. Hey… Riddick… that’s not creepy or serial killer at all, standing in our room in the middle of the night and watching us…”

Caleb extricated himself out from under Dean as carefully as he could, frowning, and said, “You could have just said hello, instead of throwing him at us.”

“Element of surprise.” Riddick said, with a smirk, and stepped a few steps closer to the bed.

Dean grumbled, and sat up between his lovers, then said, “Well? Are you just going to stand there and _watch_ us, or are you coming?”

“Oh!” Xander perked up slightly. “Yeah, no, I’m okay with that.”

Caleb offered a hand, quietly. “Coming?”

Riddick hesitated.

“C’mon…” Dean said, with a slight grin, and nodded at the others. “You aren’t afraid of us, are you?”

The convict snorted, and said, “You’re actually trying that tactic?”

Xander wiggled his fingers at Riddick, smirking. “We’ll totally try that tactic. Come on… or are you afraid of our big bad… orgy?”

He arched a brow – then kicked off his boots.

One thing they learned, almost immediately, was that Riddick liked being in control. He didn’t demand it, and he certainly didn’t _ask_ for it, but Riddick seemed to sort of slip into the situation naturally, and even while laying on a bed while three younger men tried to fumble to get his clothes off of him, Riddick seemed to have complete and total control over the situation. It was an understated understanding of the moment, as though he had inside secrets to know where exactly to lay a hand to make Xander whimper his name, or just where exactly to twist his leg to make Dean rock unexpectedly into Caleb’s hip. That, Dean thought, sort of in a distant part of his mind that hadn’t yet been completely absorbed in the animal-like _need_ to mate, was what people always meant when they said that someone was ‘dominant’. Riddick didn’t need to use whips and ball gags to have total mastery of them – but then, they also weren’t obedient, submissive slaves, neither.

Xander, as Dean had already discovered, was an animal in bed. Bed, of course, being a subjective term. He bit, and scratched, and left marks behind in his deep, instinctual need for sex. He’d thought, perhaps, that being that sexually aggressive he’d demand to top, in all circumstances, but Dean was rather pleased to discover that he was more the pushy bottom type.

He was, in fact, under Riddick, now, letting out muffled gasps of pleasure as the impressively muscled man fucked him, slower and with more even pacing than Dean would have expected from the serial killer. His cries were muffled, naturally, by the fact that he’d demandingly pulled Caleb in front of him, and seemed intent on giving the elemental the most amazing blowjob of his life. He’d get distracted, sometimes, when Riddick would change tempo or speed up or slow down, and for a moment, the gasping, sweating Xander would press his forehead to Caleb’s inner thigh and try to regain composure. Invariably, though, he’d get that control back, and plant a bite on the other’s inner thigh, in a way that had Caleb bucking and biting on his own knuckles to keep from howling to the skies, and Xander would laugh, and get back to work.

They were beautiful.

For a long few minutes, Dean wasn’t sure how many minutes, exactly, he had no watch, and even if he _had_ he wasn’t about to check it now, he was content to watch, and just let his fingers trail over the corded muscles of arms straining to keep up, or down the lines of spines to slick through sweat pooling in the crevasses of overheated skin. He would swear, in the heat, that they were steaming, their skin was fire hot, but just watching, really, had never been enough of a role to Dean Winchester in _any_ capacity.

Crawling, carefully, behind Riddick, he ran the flat of his tongue up the other’s spine, tasting salt and sand and metal.

Riddick’s muscles shifted under his hands, and Xander let out a breathy sound, so Dean grinned, decidedly pleased with himself.

Shifting lower, so that he was sprawled between Xander’s legs and Riddick’s knees, he reached up and gripped Riddick’s ass in his hands, pushing the cheeks apart. Riddick twisted slightly, trying to look over his shoulder at him, and Dean caught those glints of silver eyes with his own, and grinned.

“Trust me?” Dean drawled.

Riddick hesitated, then arched a brow, and with a devil may care shrug of his shoulder, nodded once.

And _that_ , as far as Dean was concerned, may be the hottest part of it all.

Leaning forward, Dean did the same as he had before, only lower, trailing the flat of his tongue over Riddick’s anus. He could feel the muscles in the other’s ass clenching and unclenching under his fingers, which seemed a good sign, and set to work in earnest, eagerly licking and wriggling his tongue until he could actually fuck Riddick’s ass with his tongue. The other would buck back into his mouth sometime, and when Dean would curl his tongue just right, Riddick’s hips would snap forward, and the Killer of Men would let out a gasping, breathy sound. That, naturally, made Xander let out a high pitched, keening whine, and there would be a dull thud as Caleb’s head fell back against the wall, so Dean tried to repeat it whenever it was at all possible.

It was really a thing of beauty, the four of them all tangled this way, a sort of artistic symmetry that resulted, in the end, in four bodies tumbled together on a dusty old bed, all so thoroughly, blissfully sated that it was hard for any of those involved to determine where any one of them ended and any one of them began.

“I think you fucked my brains out,” Xander said, at last, voice rough and hoarse. Dean imagined that this might have something to do with the fact that he’d essentially gotten thoroughly fucked from both ends.

It was a good sound, on him.

“Couldn’t have,” Caleb mumbled, his arm thrown across his eyes. “You’re still talking.”

“I’m not sure it takes _brains_ to talk,” Dean mumbled. Hm. His own voice had a touch of that rasp to it, too.

“Not when I do it,” Xander agreed.

Riddick snorted, then, and his fingers seemed to have found themselves in Dean’s hair, carding callused hands through the scruffy dark blond locks, tugging and pulling occasionally, but not hard enough to hurt. It was actually more soothing. Dean felt… good. _Happy_.

Certainly, he felt good in the sense that he’d just had sex. And certainly he felt pleased that he’d managed to just have a – what? Foursome? Moresome? Orgy? Where was the line there? – with not one, not two, but three extremely attractive other men. Naturally, he was also proud of himself that some of the sounds that had been wrenched from the lips of the most wanted man in the verse had been brought on by _his_ tongue.

But it was more than that.

So much fucking _more_ than just that. It was a completeness he had to admit he’d never felt before, as though he’d only been partial before, and just never knew it.

Dean didn’t want to get all sappy and emotional about this. He didn’t want to use any overdone, clichéd phrases like “puzzle pieces” and “hole he didn’t know was there”.

It was sort of hard not to, though, when he lay there feeling like _this_.

It was a relaxing sort of thing, laying here with the sweat cooling on their bodies, arms curled under and over each of them, legs tangled together, as though they were a _unit_ , the four of them melded together into a little group, comfortable and warm. Riddick kept shifting his fingers to curl into other people’s hair, as though trying to figure out whose was the best feeling on his fingers, and though Dean was disappointed to lose Riddick’s fingers, Xander’s seemed to find their way to his head next, rubbing his scalp in little circles. Dean never wanted this moment to end. It was warm, and comfortable, and fuck, Dean was having _feelings_ about it. Still, they were worth it.

It was all worth it.

The door suddenly slammed open, and Dean jumped, startled. His first instinct probably _should_ have been to grab a blanket, to cover his nudity, or something, and if he was a normal person, that probably would have been the first thing he thought of.

Dean’s first instinct was to hide Riddick.

Only it was too late, actually, because while the three of the others thought that perhaps they were just being invaded by someone who had no idea they were there, the invader, one fake-Marshall Johns, the Blue Eyed Devil, was there for one reason. And that one reason was the fourth member of their little group.

He kicked the door shut behind him, cutting off the only escape route, and cocked his rifle loudly, aiming it directly at Riddick’s face. “Well, well, well. We meet again, Riddick.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” Dean demanded, furiously.

Johns smirked. “My trap sprang.”

“What?” Xander gaped at the man, confused, trying to shift so that he was sort of in front of Riddick, trying to protect him. Riddick, very quietly, without saying anything, shifted Xander back so that he was behind him again. It was a little gesture, but Dean noticed it. He’d done it himself, many times before, with Sam. Protect the smaller ones. Xander didn’t even seem to notice that he was being protected, he was so worked up. “What are you talking about?!”

“You used us to lure Riddick,” Caleb whispered, a dawning horror on the Elemental’s face. It was the realization that he thought he should have known this was coming.

“Yeah,” he said, with a grin. “Yeah, I did.”

“How could you have – we didn’t – what the _hell_?!” Xander yelped, furiously, looking like he was about ready to leap over Riddick’s arm and tear the Marshall’s head from his shoulder. Personally, Dean wouldn’t have minded letting him, except that Johns’ pupils were blown wide open, and his hands where he held the gun were trembling slightly, which told him that the merc was on way too many drugs right now to be messing with, because at any moment, something could go terribly, completely wrong – and Dean was _not_ going to let Xander get killed because he tried to be a hero. “Why the _fuck_ would you think this would happen?! _I_ didn’t think this would happen!”

Dean drew in a sharp breath, eyes snapping to Johns’ face. “You knew. About… me. And Sam.”

The mercenary dipped his head, and held out one arm, as though bowing, though he kept the gun aimed at Riddick’s face. “Your brother’s got a bit of the eyeshine, Winchester. Keep an eye on him, next time you’re in the dark, and you’ll notice that his eyes catch the light. You know, the exact same way that Riddick’s do. So yeah… I knew you’d lure him in. Perfect.”

“Fuck you,” Dean snarled, teeth bared.

“Any time, Furyan boy,” Johns drawled, then motioned with the rifle. “C’mon, Riddick, baby… let’s get up. We need to get you chained.”

“You really think you can take all four of us?” Riddick said, lowly.

“No.” The merc shook his head. “But I don’t _have_ to. See, I have an ace up my sleeve. Know what that is, Riddick?”

The killer narrowed his eyes, and Dean glanced at him, not seeing what the damage was.

“The first kit. It’s gone, right?”

Xander frowned, still trying to get out from behind Riddick – who was still keeping him very firmly _behind_ him. “Yeah, it’s gone, you know that, we found bits of it, but it’s not a full kit.”

“Yeah, well… I got morphine.” Johns smirked. “You need it.”

Caleb heaved a soft sigh, and shook his head. “Johns, I’m not certain that trying to threaten us with morphine when no one is injured is really going to convince us to do _anything_.”

“Who said no one was injured?” He grinned.

And then Johns tugged a knife out from behind his back, and tossed it casually forward, so that it landed on the end of the bed. That could be dangerous, of course, but no one was hit, no one was cut – he never intended for it to hurt them. It didn’t have to. It was already bloody, and Dean snatched it off the bed, eyes wide. It smelled familiar and sharp, coppery and crisp. Dean was more than used to the scent of blood, _he_ was usually the one spilling it. But this wasn’t just blood.

Dean felt the blood drain from his face.

“What is it?” Xander asked, frowning.

Riddick snatched the knife from Dean’s fingers, then he snarled, teeth bared at Johns. “You _sick_ son of a whore.”

“It worked, didn’t it?” The mercenary just smirked.

“What _is_ it?” Xander demanded.

“Where is he?” Dean slid out of the bed, grabbing a pair of pants, and not really fucking caring if they weren’t his own. Jerking them on, he said, again, “ _Where is he_?!”

“Coring room.” Johns drawled. “But not so fast, Furyan boy. No one moves until Riddick is cuffed.”

“Fuck. You.” He snarled.

“ _What is it_?!” Xander scrambled off the bed, confused.

“Move.” Dean growled at the merc, teeth clenched as he fought the urge to simply throw himself at him and tear the man limb from limb.

“Riddick.  Cuffed.” He said again, arching a brow. “Now let’s get him cuffed as quickly as possible, shall we, before it’s too late. After all, it was _Riddick_ that taught me about the sweet spot. Third vertebrae up, two inches over. Bleed like a stuck pig.”

The Killer of Men stood, jaw set, and offered his hands, silently.

“Good man.” Johns smirked, and tugged cuffs off of his belt, snapping them onto Riddick’s wrists, not seeming to care that the man was actually naked, just locking him up. “Thanks for playing perfectly into my trap, Riddick. You’re predictable. Now… there’s a boy bleeding to death in the Coring Room… anyone going to take care of him? Because if you want the morphine…” Johns tugged a small metal box out of the back of his belt, and offered it calmly to Dean. “Go save your brother, Furyan boy.”

“ _Sam_?!” Xander gasped, horrified.

Dean didn’t hesitate, he had already slammed the door open, and barefoot, in Riddick’s combat style pants, he tore through the town, gripping the morphine case, tightly. Smashing through the doors of the Coring Room, he skidded to a stop inside, and let out an agonized sound. “ _Sammy_ …”

His brother was leaning on one of the instrument panels, and looked up at him through half-closed eyes, panting hard. There was blood on the sand, drying in the sand, all little clumps of captured blood. “Hey Dean…”

“Oh… Sam…” Gathering him into his arms, he touched his brother’s lower back, nervously, feeling where he was wounded. There was a gash in Sam’s lower back, but his spine wasn’t severed, he thought that it could be stitched up if maybe they could find a way to stop the bleeding… morphine wasn’t going to help with _that_ , but at least his brother wasn’t going to be in pain if he dosed him…

There was movement beside him, and Caleb was suddenly crouched beside him, wearing only his vest, which seemed to flare out like it was made of the breezes itself, swirling around them. “I can dose him. Start patching.”

“Thanks,” he whispered, and shifted his brother, carefully, tugging up his shirt.

“Oh… oh _Dean_ , that hurts…” Sam whispered, softly. There was no pain in his voice, though, his baby brother wasn’t letting on that he was actually as badly hurt as he was.

“I’m sorry, kiddo,” Dean murmured, hissing slightly at the sight of the wound. It wasn’t as bad as he’d expected, Johns hadn’t actually technically stabbed him, he’d _slashed_ at him, instead, cutting a wide swath in the skin, into the flesh – but it wasn’t that deep. “Do we have needles and thread, or…?”

“…Johns raided the first aid kit.” Caleb whispered, the open morphine case in his hand, and rustled in the case for a moment before he offered Dean exactly what he’d asked for.

“I am going to kill him,” he growled, but his attention had to be on Sam’s back, on knitting up the wound so that his brother would survive this incident. Taking a deep breath, he looked  up at Caleb. “Stick him quickly, please, so I can stitch.”

“Of course.” The elemental hesitated, then primed the morphine gun, as quickly as he could, with inexperienced fingers. Dean wanted to snag it from his hands and just do it himself, but he had to keep his brother protected, had to try and save him… using his fingers, he kept the wound as closed as he could manage, and swallowed, watching him. Caleb _was_ doing a good job, anyway, as he pressed one hand to Sam’s jaw to keep his head in place, then with the other, pressed the needle where it needed to go – right in the corner of Sam’s eye, where the eyelids met – and fired the morphine gun with a hiss.

Sam arched slightly, hissing, and Dean pressed harder on the wound, trying to keep it closed.

A moment later, Sam slumped to the sand again, chest heaving as he breathed, and a desperate, furious Dean got to work, stitching his brother’s wound back up.

 

\---

 

Johns had hauled Riddick from that room where he’d actually managed to enjoy himself, out into the centre of the town, then tied him to the pole in the centre of the little village, naked, barefoot, and bare.

He’d let him keep the goggles, at least, that was something. Because it was too bright out here for him to have been able to stand it, he would have been in agony, without them. Even with them, it wasn’t all that pleasant, though being naked… well. He didn’t care about that. Riddick remembered the stories, when he was a young soldier for the Company, and his superior officer would tell them about old human armies, back on their home world. There was a nation, so those stories went, that ran naked into battle, to prove that they not only didn’t think their opponents were worthy of armour, they didn’t even think they were enough of a threat to wear _clothes_. So the stories said, their enemies scattered before them, terrified of these naked madmen. Riddick always thought it was a smart tactic.

Of course, some of the other survivors had a _problem_ with Riddick being cuffed with his hands behind his back in the middle of their little home, naked.

Riddick had smirked as he listened to the Imam go up one side of Johns and down the other, tearing a metaphorical strip right off of the merc. It did his heart good, he thought, to hear the Blue Eyed Devil get what was coming to him. Finally, though, the Imam had simply scoffed at Johns, apparently finding him frustratingly unrepentant, then tugged the cloak he had been wearing off, and carefully wound it around Riddick’s waist, as a skirt of some kind. Riddick had pointed out, lowly, that he didn’t need to ‘hide his shame’ the way the Christers thought he should, but the Imam had simply smiled and asked him to humour him.

It wasn’t like he could argue, anyway. He was still cuffed.

Drawing in a deep breath, Riddick lifted his jaw, drawing in the scent of the people in the village, the survivors. Shifting slightly, standing up straighter, he said, lowly, “How is he?”

Xander’s fingers lightly touched Riddick’s bare shoulder, then the younger man sank to sit on the sand beside him, folding his legs under him. “He’ll make it. But it’s not going to be easy. Johns really did a number on him.”

He bared his teeth slightly, displeased. “Fuck him.”

“Think we can find a way to just… kill Johns?” Xander asked, looking up at him, hands resting in his lap. “Without anyone shooting us in retaliation? Or… something? Because he only gave us enough morphine for that one dose, and Sam is… well, he’s not going to say he’s in pain, Dean says he’s always been like that, but he _has_ to be in pain. He slashed his whole back open.”

“How’d he catch the kid?” Riddick frowned, tugging slightly on the cuffs, testing how tight they were. The answer, as it turned out, was _very_. “I’ve been watching everyone. That kid wouldn’t just be _caught_.”

“Dean asked the same thing.” He cleared his throat. “…he tricked him. Wore _Dean’s_ jacket, and crept up behind him.”

“…the kid could smell his brother,” he breathed, lifting his jaw.

“Yeah,” Xander nodded, quietly, scooping up a handful of sand, and let it trail out of his hand down to the ground again, the wind catching the little grains and blowing them away. He watched them for a moment, glinting in the too-bright suns of this damn planet, and sighed. “Sam wasn’t expecting betrayal, so he didn’t think anything of it. He’s… not walking.”

“He cut that deep?” He growled.

“No, he didn’t.” He said, quickly, licking his lips as he looked up to meet Riddick’s eyes. “He’ll be _able_ to walk, he’s not doomed, he – he’ll be able to walk, soon as it heals a little more, but… he cut it pretty deep, and Dean stitched him up. We’re afraid that if he tries to stand, or move, it’ll tear the stitches open, and maybe it’s not an issue, what with the fact that the creatures are _under_ the surface, but… I don’t think any of us want Sam bleeding and taunting them.”

“They must come to the surface sometimes,” Riddick frowned. It was easier talking about the beasts under the sandy surface of the planet than it was to talk about the boy that had been injured because _they_ had been distracted. “Or they wouldn’t have killed everyone here.”

Xander frowned, then said, “Does it get dark?”

“One sun sets, two rise. Two set, one rises. Nothing dark there.”

Leaning back, he rested his head on the side of the pole that Riddick was cuffed to, silently, looking up at the sky, though not directly at the suns. The last thing Xander needed was to be blinded. Still, he certainly didn’t argue when Riddick slid his fingers silently into his hair, callused fingers tugging slightly at his scruffy dark curls. “…what about the moons? The other planets in the system? See that one there, with the rings? Think they get… eclipses, maybe?”

Still carding his fingers through Xander’s hair, as awkward as that was in this position, Riddick muttered, “Might. We’d need a way to check the system’s orbits.”

Xander hesitated. “There’s one of… things. With the little models of the planets that turns around?”

“Orrery?”

“….yeah, okay, orrery. That’s a thing. Yeah, there’s one of those, in one of the houses. It’s labeled Hades, so… I sort of assume it’s for this system.”

“You need to check it.”

“… _now_?”

“ _Now_.” Riddick said, and slid his fingers out of Xander’s hair, tugging on his cuffs, then scowled. “Check it, then come back. Tell me if it gets dark. Because those people didn’t just _feed_ themselves to the beasts.”

“Right.” Xander scrambled up to his feet, almost crashing to his face on the sand, and managing to prevent that only because he caught the edge of one of the scattered storage boxes in the town. Clearing his throat, he grinned crookedly at Riddick, as though trying to pretend, catlike, that he’d _meant_ to do that, then when Riddick didn’t smile, but continued to give him that serious, intent look, he darted for the house where he’d seen that orrery.

Riddick watched him go, twisting slightly around the pole so that he could continue to watch him as he darted into the little house. Xander was a bit like a puppy, eager to please and so _very_ eager for love.

He’d be happy to give him some, once they got off this damn planet.

He already knew, when Xander appeared in the door of the house, that he’d been right. This planet _did_ go dark, there was a time of reckoning coming. The beasts _did_ sometimes come to the surface. He knew from the look on the younger man’s face, the pale, sort of bloodless way that he looked. Slowly, Xander came towards him, not running like he had gone a moment before, licking his lips again. A sign of dehydration, even though they’d gotten the water running again. Riddick needed to get free so that he could force his boys to drink water. Dying of thirst in the desert wasn’t a good way for _anyone_ to go.

Clearing his throat, Xander spoke up, as he came closer. “Eclipse.”

“For how long?”

“…a year.” He said, quietly. “For one year, every orbital cycle of twenty two years, the planet’s alignment settles into… an eclipse. All three suns are cut off by the planet with the rings. They align. We’d be trapped in darkness, here.”

“And the animals would eat us.” Riddick said, though it didn’t _really_ need saying. Both of them knew it.

“Yeah, I’m starting to think that.” Xander said, quietly, and leaned against Riddick’s chest, sliding his arms around the other’s neck, and burying his face in Riddick’s neck. It was very… vulnerable, the way that Xander was curling into him. An openness that said that he trusted Riddick – and that he didn’t care who else knew that he did.

Riddick actually wished that he could curl his arm around his waist, and hold the boy closer.

Barring that, he buried his nose in the dark curls, drawing in his scent – and watched Johns as the merc approached, from over the top of Xander’s skull. “Johns,” he breathed.

“Fuck him, I’m not moving,” Xander muttered, quietly.

He smirked against the top of his skull, and just watched the merc approach, the rifle cradled in his arms like a baby, looking entirely displeased by the way that Xander was curling into his bounty. “What are you doing with my prisoner, kid?”

Sighing, heavily, Xander twisted slightly, looking at the merc. “…I’m hugging Riddick.”

He arched a brow. “You’re _hugging_ Riddick?”

“What, now you’re going to pretend you _didn’t_ find us naked in bed? Because if you’d been about ten minutes earlier, you would have seen us more than naked, okay? So yeah, I’m _hugging Riddick_. Fuck you, you’re a sick son of a bitch that attacks _children_ because you’re not actually strong enough to take on men yourself.”

Riddick hid his smirk in the curls. He tended to _agree_ with Xander, but he wasn’t about to _say_ it.

At least not yet.

Later, he’d say it with the cuffs, twisting them around Johns’ neck, and cutting off his air. That seemed like a nice fate for him. Or maybe he’d slash him apart with one of those knives that Dean carried in the back of his jeans, or maybe he’d simply feed the merc to the beasts. No… Johns pissed him off, but there was someone else that deserved to kill him more than Riddick did.

Johns death was Dean’s to deal.

Revenge for his little brother’s injuries.

But Riddick could certainly give him some pain, before his lover gave him his release in death.

Johns didn’t get defensive, though, he just smirked. “That, boy, was _creativity_.”

“That’s one word for it,” Riddick said.

“So, by the way…” Xander finally twisted against Riddick’s chest, standing so that he was facing Johns, though he was still curled in against his chest, and said, calmly, “The world is ending. Not all of them, just this one. We’re going to die.”

Johns scoffed, finally, at that. “Yes, of course, we’re going to die.”

“No, see… we are.” He said, and Riddick didn’t miss the way that the boy’s hands found his cuffs behind the pole, searching for weaknesses in them, and at the same time, the way that Xander was trembling against his chest. There was no tremor in his voice, he sounded as though this was a conversation that he always had. But there was fear, in the boy, he could feel it thrumming through his skin. “Because we haven’t yet gotten the power cells here, to fit into the ship. We kept thinking we’d have lots of time. But… we don’t _have_ time, Johns. We’re going to die because _you_ decided to attack an otherwise healthy boy, and lock up the most powerful person in our group. We need his strength to get the cells here, and _you_ chained him up. So we’re going to die, Johns.”

He scoffed. “Why would you think that?”

Riddick pressed his lips to Xander’s temple, then lifted his jaw, and said, “He’s right, Johns. The darkness is coming, and with it, that comes the beasts.”

Johns sneered. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Turn around.” Xander said, still curled in tight to Riddick.

“That is the oldest trick in the book.” The mercenary laughed, shaking his head.

“Turn around, Johns.” Riddick said, without humour in his voice.

He hesitated, then the mercenary slowly turned, facing the direction that both men were looking – and by doing so, he saw exactly what Xander and Riddick were seeing. The sky that they’d gotten used to was still bright, but there was movement in it. The secondary planet in the Hades system, massive and ringed, was shifting across the sky, and it was slowly sliding across the suns, cutting them off. Already – and it barely started – there were shadows starting to stretch across the sand.

They had to get that shuttle running.

Now.

Or Xander was right, they were _going to die_.

“…son of a bitch,” Johns breathed, staring up at the sky like he had never seen an eclipse before, like he had no idea what to do, now.

“Tell them to put Sam on the ship.” Riddick breathed into Xander’s ear, quietly. “Lock him in, _do not let him out_. Give him water, and tell him to wait for us. Then get Dean and Caleb, you need the power cells.”

“We’ll get you out,” Xander breathed.

“Don’t. People I help die.”

“Yeah, well, so do the people I fuck.” The other shrugged, and smirked slightly when Riddick’s eyes flicked to him. “So we cancel each other out. Where does Johns keep the keys?”

“On his belt.”

“Done.”

Xander was suddenly in motion, throwing himself at the mercenary, bare feet slamming on the sandy, hard packed courtyard in the middle of the little skeletal remains of the village. He slammed into Johns, and Riddick jerked against the cuffs when the younger man fumbled for the keys off the belt of the shocked mercenary, jerking them free of where they were hanging. The problem was, Riddick knew that Johns was dangerous when he was angry.

Just as he’d expected, Johns reeled towards Xander, raising the gun, and fired.

His boy let out a shout of surprise and pain, and Riddick snarled, jerking against the cuffs as blood misted the air in front of Xander, the buckshot from the rifle slamming into his shoulder and tearing and ripping at the flesh. It was a wound, but it was only a glancing wound, Xander would be fine so long as he got it bandaged up, quickly enough, but Johns was priming the gun again, and lifting it to fire at the boy again –

A slim, silver, black handled knife slammed between Johns’ eyes.

The mercenary stumbled backwards, eyes wide, startled, as though he didn’t quite know what had just happened. The knife vibrated slightly in his forehead, thrumming like a tuning fork, a single fat drop of blood rolling down the side of his nose towards his chin, and Johns sort of crossed his eyes, trying to see what had happened to him.

And then he crumpled, as though his legs had lost their bones, and he collapsed backwards onto the sand, the rifle skittering away.

It was only when Johns was _down_ that Riddick twisted on the pole, and grinned.

It was earlier than he’d expected, but Dean Winchester had done exactly his job. He was standing still, hand still thrust out from the follow through of the throwing of that knife, jaw tightly set.

Beautiful.

Absolutely morbidly beautiful.

“Dean.” Riddick said, lifting his jaw. “We need to move.”

The freckled young man’s eyes flicked to him, then Dean darted into action just like Xander had that first time, grabbing the keys from Xander, and moving to uncuff Riddick from the pole.

“Good job,” he rumbled, quietly, as the other worked to unlock him.

“Wanted him to suffer, actually,” Dean grumbled, though his eyes were on Xander, and on a startled looking Caleb that had emerged from one of the buildings. Must have been the building they were keeping Sam in. Caleb, though he looked completely taken aback by everything that had happened, was already tending to Xander’s wounded shoulder, trying to wrap it up, and Riddick was pleased. If he had to chose lovers to get trapped on a planet with, these were good ones for that. Worth _trying_ to help them, maybe. Dean’s words, about wanting the man that Riddick himself hated to suffer, that actually helped. He liked that in a man – judicial, fair, and weighing people by their own merits, but if they deserved hated, to give them that hatred in spades. “But I guess this will have to do.”

“He can be food.” Riddick said. “The darkness is coming.”

“We saw,” he said, and tugged the cuffs free, finally. “It was the shadows that made me come out, we didn’t know what was going on. Guess I had good timing.”

He smirked. “Did Caleb send you out?”

Dean rounded the pole to look up at him, and frowned for a moment. “…yeah, actually. Caleb told me to check on – _odds_.”

Riddick snickered slightly, and stepped towards the body of the man that had been tracking him for years. Johns looked still and silent, eyes still open, that blade still sticking out of his forehead as though it was trying to split his face in two. Sneering down at the body, he bent, and jerked the knife out with a good hard tug, making the whole corpse jerk like a broken marionette. Swiping the blade on the dead man’s pants, he straightened, and offered it back to Dean. “We’re going to have to get used to our lover knowing the odds. Your knife.”

He licked his lips, then slowly took it back. “Thanks.”

He nodded. “We need to move.”

Xander headed towards them, quickly, his left arm cradled to his chest with a sling that was made of a pale blue silk that both of them recognized immediately as a part of Caleb’s vest. It was holding his arm up, and another chunk of the same vest was tied around from his shoulder to just under his right arm, a rough bandage that blood was already seeping through. He swallowed as he approached, and said, “We need to get those power cells, and we need them now. Dean, you took a look, how many do we need?”

“Nine.” He said, licking his lips. “We need nine.”

“…how do we get them?”

“The sledge you used.” Riddick frowned, and pointed at Dean. “That sledge you made. Use that. I’ll pull it. Where are my boots?”

“With Sam.   _Sam_!” He breathed, eyes wide.

“Our injured should go in the shuttle,” Caleb said, as he jogged up to them, bare-chested. His tunic seemed to be gone, too, leaving him only in the silk pants and slippers he’d been wearing when they landed, and otherwise, everything was gone. “Locked inside, just in case…”

“I’m not leaving my brother behind.” Dean said, sharply.

“And I am sure as hell not going to be locked in the shuttle, either!” Xander howled.

“We can fight later.” Riddick pushed Dean towards the house he’d been in before. “I need my boots, and we need to move Sam. _Now_. We’ll leave the Imam with him.”

Dean hesitated, and those bright green eyes, darkening with every stretch of the shadows across the sand, looked up at him for a long, searching moment, a thousand thoughts flitting through those eyes, a thousand different fears and hopes and even desires flicking past, then Dean jerked his head in a rough nod, and said, “I’ll need your help.”

“Of course.” He nodded, and as one, they moved towards the house Dean and Caleb had just emerged from.

Sam looked young.

Very, _very_ young. He was almost as old as Riddick had been when he’d left for the Company army, certainly old enough to handle himself confidently, most of the time, but at that moment, laying on that bed, wearing a pair of blood stained pants and Caleb’s tunic, Sam looked _very_ young. Like a little boy.

But he didn’t look scared.

There were no fear in his eyes, which in the darkness of the inside of that house looked nearly as silver as Riddick’s did. Johns hadn’t been lying about the boy’s eyeshine.

Apparently that was a Furyan thing.

Riddick had thought it was a surgery that Papa Joe had done, in the Butcher Bay slam… he _had_ thought that twenty menthol cools for an arm fix _and_ a surgical shine job had been too good of a deal to be true. Still, Sam looked up at him, as though he’d been expecting it to be them, and said, “Are you locking me away, then?”

“Heard that, did you,” he rumbled, not actually surprised, and bent to snag the boots beside the bed Sam lay in.

“Yeah.” He murmured, then reached out to catch Riddick’s arm. “Don’t let them get eaten.”

Riddick looked at the boy, eyes silver like his, and nodded.

Letting out a sigh of relief, Sam released his arm, and flopped back on the bed. “I could help, but Dean will never let me.”

“Damn right he won’t,” Dean agreed, as he stepped into the room, properly, frowning.

The younger Winchester rolled his eyes. “See?”

“I see,” Riddick agreed, tugging on his boots, and buckling them up, tightly.

“…don’t you think you should be wearing pants?” Xander asked, frowning slightly as he considered him. “Cause… while I really appreciate the looks of your legs, the skirt look… sure that’s… good?”

“Do we look like we have time for magical chair pants?” Riddick bent to scoop up Sam, blankets and all, and was frankly impressed that Sam didn’t cry out in pain, or even make a sound, just clutched tightly at Riddick’s upper arm and pressed his lips tightly together. “Caleb, get the Imam.”

He nodded, and literally breezed out of the room, as though he was made of the wind itself, disappearing quickly.

Cradling Sam, Riddick said, “We need to move.”

“Moving,” Xander agreed, quickly, and darted out of the little house again, heading for the shuttle.

Dean drifted his fingers over Sam’s forehead, then headed out as well.

Riddick waited just until Dean was out of the room, then lowered his voice, and murmured, “You’re going to have to help get the ship prepped. Your brother will tell you not to move. You’ll take care of it, right?”

Sam nodded, lips still tightly pressed together.

“Good kid,” Riddick rumbled, then broke into a jog, carrying the boy and  his blankets towards the shuttle, bursting into the fading sunlight. It was getting darker, but it was still bright enough that the boy sucked in a sharp breath and buried his face in Riddick’s chest, but he didn’t comment on it, he just kept going, and a moment later, jogged up the ramp into the shuttle.

The Imam was already there, looking _very_ worried, and shifted closer when Riddick laid Sam out on the only bed in the back of the shuttle. “Do we have any of that morphine left, for him?”

“I don’t need it.” Sam said, through gritted teeth, laying on the little bed. “I’m fine.”

The Imam scoffed at that, and said, firmly, “Where’s Johns? We can ask him where he kept the morphine, he’ll need it…”

“Johns is dead.” Dean said, voice cold, then crouched beside the bed, cupping his brother’s jaw. “Lookit me, Sammy. We’re going to go get the cells, then come back, and we’re going to get off this planet, okay? Just listen to the Imam, _don’t move_ , and we’ll be… we’ll be back, okay?”

“We have to move,” Xander said, leaning back in the shuttle from outside. “Seriously. We really need to move. The sun is setting fast.”

Dean swallowed, and didn’t look up from his brother’s face. “I know. I can hear them. You hear me, Sammy?”

“Go,” Sam said, gritting his jaw, tightly. Riddick had to respect the boy’s strength. “And you better come back in one piece, or I am going to find a way to raise you from the dead so that I can kill you myself, you got it?”

“Got it.” Dean kissed his forehead, quickly, then stood, and pointed at the Imam. “Lock yourselves in, keep the lights on, and keep him safe, you hear me?”

“I hear you, Dean.” The Imam knelt beside the bed with the boy laying on it, brushing his hair back, quietly. “I lost my boys in the crash. I will move mountains to ensure that yours is safe. We will be here, when you return, praying for your safety.”

“Right.” Dean didn’t look impressed by the promises of prayers, but he marched out of the shuttle anyway, recognizing the need to _move_.

Riddick was just steps behind him.

 

\---

 

It was completely possible to walk from the village back to the wreck. Hell, that was how they’d gotten there in the first place, from the original crash site. However, it was much more difficult to get there in a _hurry_ , which they needed to do, in order to avoid darkfall.

Fortunately, in the village, they’d found two vehicles, not  just one – the shuttle that Sam and the Imam were locked into – and a solar sand cat that a proud Dean had gotten working a couple days before. It was what they had used to get most anything that was salvageable from the containers and back to the wreck, with the intentions of gathering up the best of that and getting it to the village. It was what they had used to get the one power cell they’d gotten installed in the shuttle back there, because those damn things were heavy. The problem was, they’d thought that they were going to have _time_ to get the power cells there, time to do everything as best they could. It was more than just surviving, they’d thought that they were surviving with a bit of… well, if not style, certainly a level of comfort.

At the moment, it was just desperation.

Xander clung to the rollover cage as Dean drove the sand cat like he’d stolen it, the whole vehicle bouncing over apparently every rock in the desert, yelping slightly when the really bad bumps came, and he became absolutely sure that they were going to bounce right out onto the desert floor. It hurt like hell, every little bump, the buck shot still embedded in his shoulder burning like searing pain, his arm trying to lock up, sometimes. Unpleasant.

The problem was, he wanted to ask Dean to slow down – except that he kept looking up at the sky… and the sun was rapidly fading from it.

Twisting, he looked back at Riddick, and said, “Is it true that you can hear them?”

Riddick frowned at him, then nodded.

“…are they getting louder?”

“Yes.” Riddick said, without a moment of hesitation.

“…so they’re getting closer to eating us.”

“If they get the chance, they will rip your flesh from your bones, and consume you while you’re still alive.” Riddick said, looking remarkably unphased  by the way that the vehicle was bumping. “They will consume you.”

“…cheerful.” Xander said, slowly.

“We’re going to have to hurry, the moment we stop, we’re going to have to run,” Caleb said, from where he was sitting across from Riddick, and touched Xander’s shoulder lightly. The good one, fortunately. “If you don’t think you can carry the power cells, you don’t have to.”

“I will carry the power cells.” Xander said, stubbornly. He refused to admit that he was weak.

He _might_ be weak.

But he sure as hell wasn’t going to _admit_ it.

Riddick frowned slightly, considering him for a long moment, then shrugged with one shoulder, and looked back towards the route they were heading on, frowning.

Xander sighed, clutching tighter at the roll bars, glancing at the sun. It was getting darker and darker, now, until even the vehicle was starting to slow down, because there was simply not going to be enough sunlight to power the engine. Fortunately, there was apparently enough sunlight to skid up to the wreck of the ship, and all four of them spilled out of the sandcat, running to try and get the power cells.

They worked together, scrambling and moving and scooping them up, and they worked remarkably _well_ together, Xander thought.

Well, except that someone always kept taking the power cells from him whenever he was carrying one on his good shoulder, and Xander would find himself standing there holding nothing, blinking, then turn around to go grab another one – only to have another of the men grab that from his hands, too.

“We have nine!” Dean called, dragging the sledge towards the sand cat to tie it onto the back, so that they could drag them towards the village – but it wasn’t going to help.

The suns slid completely behind the planet.

Darkness fell.

Xander had never really understood that phrase before, darkness falling. That seemed strange to him, when people said that, because he sort of always figured that darkness sort of quietly faded into the sky around the planet, and he’d never heard anything about darkness _falling_. But here, it did. The last slivers of light were cut completely off, and abruptly darkness dropped around them, like a cloak that someone had dropped on top of them, and he blinked, owlishly, around them. There were still enough traces of light around the edge of the planet that they weren’t stumbling around with no light at all, tripping over their own feet, but still, it was _dark_. Very, _very_ dark.

And then Dean was grabbing at his arm, hauling Xander bodily towards the storage container and howling for Riddick to _come now_ so there wasn’t really time to contemplate the dark anymore.

It was Riddick and Dean that grabbed the door of the storage container, and jerked it shut, slamming it with a ring that seemed very… final. That plunged the whole of their space that they had lived in, for that little while, into complete and total darkness, and Xander stumbled back, feeling for the little beds they’d set up, and when his palm hit the softness of the mattress, he landed on it with a thump. “…do we have any light?” He asked, wishing he knew where the hell the other three were, because it was really hard to talk to pitch black darkness and hope to all hell that he was actually talking to one of them.

There was movement to his left, and Xander jumped slightly, alarmed.

“It’s just me,” Caleb’s voice said, curling his fingers on his Xander’s non-injured shoulder, and he relaxed slightly under the other’s touch.

“Yeah, we have a torch…” Dean said, and light flared into the small space, casting everything into sharp shadows and making Xander yelp and toss his good eye in front of his eyes for a moment, wincing. “Well, that’s a surprisingly good one.”

“Just keep it out of my eyes,” Riddick rumbled, prowling around the edge of the little storage container, as though looking for openings. God, Xander hoped that there were no openings in here, the way they described those animals, the last thing he wanted was for them to get inside where they needed to be _safe_.

He had seem what Shazza and Zeke’s bodies had looked like, when they had been pulled from the Coring Room, despite the other’s attempts to shield him from it. Their flesh had been torn from their bones, leaving them bare and stripped.

He couldn’t see the same thing happen to his lovers.

“Trust me,” Dean muttered, letting the light trail over Riddick’s legs, as he walked. Perhaps he was lighting his way. Perhaps he was watching his ass. Hard to tell the difference. “I don’t want the light anywhere near mine, either.”

“Well, at least you don’t have the same eyeshine?” Xander shrugged with one shoulder, then hesitated.

“What is it?” Dean frowned.

“How do we get out of here?” He asked, leaning slightly into Caleb’s shoulder, quietly. “I mean, Riddick can see in the dark, right? So that’s awesome. But even with mister-see-in-the-dark, we still have to get back across that valley with the power cells and… not get eaten.”

“Good point,” Caleb murmured. “Can we ride out the darkness, wait until it’s sunny again, and the animals go back under the surface?”

“Nope.” Xander shook his head. “I found the orrery thing. It’s dark for a year.”

“A _year_?” Dean repeated, turning to face them.

“Yeah,” He nodded, quietly.

Riddick’s fingers slid into Xander’s hair again, and he sighed softly, leaning into the touch, not really all that bothered by the fact that this was happening more and more often, lately. Of course, that probably had something to do with the fact that Riddick had fucked him senseless yesterday, but that wasn’t the point. They all had, when you thought about it that way. And frankly, if he was going to be facing the end of the world as he knew it – and as far as he was concerned, being eaten certainly represented an end to the world as _he_ knew it – then he would rather be facing it with no one other than these three men. Which okay, was maybe a dick move considering he’d faced the end of actual worlds – and sometimes the verse – several times over with Buffy and Willow and Giles, and really, _they_ should have been his favourite people to face apocalypses with, but, well… he’d never had mind blowing orgasms with Buffy and Willow. That was definitely something that Riddick, Dean and Caleb had going for them.

“Xander found the orrery,” Riddick confirmed, and he’d pushed his goggles up onto his forehead again, silver eyes glinting at them. “We have a year. We also have an injured boy waiting in a shuttle with the Imam. We need to move.”

“Yeah, but how do we get through… _that_?” Dean frowned, and waved vaguely at the door.

There was a strange sound outside, sort of a high pitched warbling that sounded oddly like singing, multiple levels of sound weaving over and through each other, pressing into their ears, like a strange sort of siren song, trying to lure them out of the container and out into their domain. Every once in awhile, they would hear a shriek that made them think of ravenous beasts trying to eat someone, and Xander wondered if maybe they _were_ eating someone. After all, though they’d buried the victims of the crash that they could find, they hadn’t found forty of the presumed missing bodies, and scattered across the sand, there were probably a few corpses, days old and starting to stink.

Xander couldn’t blame the beasts for wanting to eat some new fresh bodies.

“They must have _some_ weakness.” Caleb murmured.

“Yeah, think you can see any?” He grinned at him, smirking slightly. “Use those elemental powers of yours for good.”

“They don’t quite work that way,” Caleb smirked.

Riddick, whose fingers were definitely still in Xander’s hair, shook his head slightly. “They don’t come out when the sun is up. They live in the darkness. The light keeps them inside.”

Dean nodded, frowning slightly. “That’s right, when they opened the Coring Room in the first place, the little ones fled the moment the sun came in. Do you think the light actually hurts them, or is it just like you, Riddick, that they can’t see in the light, maybe?”

Frowning slightly, Riddick clearly considered that. “Give me the torch.”

There was a moment of silence, as they blinked up at him, then Dean shrugged, and flipped his torch around, offering the handle to Riddick. The man slid his fingers free of Xander’s hair, which made him sigh softly in loss, and grabbed the light, then headed to the door.

“Woah, where are you going?” Xander yelped.

“I’m going to find out.”

“Wait… if you’re going out there, you’re going to get eaten.” Dean said, grabbing the other’s arm, and didn’t back down when Riddick gave him a stern glare. “Don’t give me that look. If you go out there, you’re going to get eaten. And I refuse to watch a man I haven’t yet managed to fuck get eaten.”

“I’m not going to fix that now.” He said, and kissed Dean, fiercely, until the younger looked entirely distracted when Riddick finally let him go and headed forward to grab the door handle.

“Wait, but… _Riddick_ …” Xander scrambled to his feet.

“Would _you_ rather test it?” He asked, hand still on the handle, holding the torch on his hip, arching a brow.

“Um… no.” He admitted, clearing his throat, but he was standing up anyway, moving forward, and said, “I just sort of didn’t think it would be fair for you to run out there and possibly die without actually kissing _all_ of us goodbye. So, ah… how about that, huh?”

“You’re an idiot,” Riddick said, but kissed him anyway, hard enough that Xander clutched at his arm with his good hand, and made a soft whimpering sound as he melted against his chest.

A moment later, though, Xander found himself being held up by Dean instead of Riddick, an arm around his waist, and the door was sliding open with a rattle and a click, then Riddick was stepping outside – and closing the door behind him. Panting, Xander said, “Hey, you didn’t kiss Caleb good bye,” but it was a moot point, really, because he was more freaking out about the fact that Riddick had just stepped _outside_ , where the creatures and the darkness were.

Dean cracked the door back open, partially because they wanted to see what the results of Riddick’s apparent experiment were going to be, but also because they wanted him to be able to get back _into_ the compartment when he finished it. Together, the three inside the container gathered around the door, peering through the crack, nervously, as they watched Riddick walk down into the little valley that had been carved out of the desert by the arrival of said container. He stood there as though he wasn’t worried about the approach of the creatures or anything else, a dim shadow in the darkness now that he had turned the torch off.

“What is he trying to prove?” Xander murmured.

“Whatever it is, I hope he’s right,” Caleb responded, just as quietly. Good point.

“ _Look_!” Dean hissed, pointing at the sky. Xander didn’t see what he was pointing at for a long moment, confused – until he saw movement against the stars, blotting them out in an ever shifting pattern of movement. Wings. The animals could _fly_. Oh, that made things even better, Xander thought, as they dipped and whirled and wove together in the sky like a macabre dance of death coming on wings. They were strangely majestic and beautiful, if he looked past the fact that they were coming to eat them, like they had eaten the original settlers of the planet, as they swept closer.

They lived in the dark, didn’t they? So Xander sort of figured that maybe they couldn’t see. Did they navigate by scent? Maybe that song thing of theirs was some kind of echolocation? Maybe. Xander didn’t really consider himself an expert on animals. Alien animals even less so. _Goldfish_ , he knew.

These… were not goldfish.

Still, watching the skies, he could see the moment that the animals really found Riddick, and the tempo of their song actually rose before they swept back towards him.

“Oh gods, Riddick…” Xander breathed.

Riddick stood still on the sand, watching the animal’s approach as though it was nothing – and far after Xander would have run for the hills, he suddenly flicked the torch back on, and flicked it up at the animals.

They scattered.

It was hard to describe, in some ways, Xander thought. In the end, he found himself relating the creatures to goldfish, after all. They didn’t look much like the little golden flitters, but they moved like them, all fluid and smooth, wheeling through the sky like it was their pond, their wings dipping like they were fins. The light from Riddick’s torch was like the rocks that Xander had dropped into the little fishbowl, sending them scattering in every direction, though these creatures, with their large heads that reminded him of other aquatic creatures – what had the textbooks called them… hammer head sharks? – screeched in a way that goldfish definitely never did.

But Riddick, apparently, wanted to do more than just scatter the animals, because he started running, pinning the flashlight beam on one animal. It screeched, and sort of seemed to wobble in the air.

Then it fell.

The other animals had scattered, and Riddick straddled the body of the beast. It roared and slashed at him, trying to tear him to shreds, but the killer just shone the light straight in the beast’s chest. They could see, inside, all but leaning right out of the compartment, that the thing bucked and struggled and fought under him, desperate to get away from the light – but they could also see that it’s skin was bubbling, burning under the light of nothing more than a flashlight.

“…the light _hurts_ them.” Xander breathed.

“…we could use that.” Dean said, frowning slightly. “We can actually use that information.”

But Riddick kept the light on the beast, until it had actually burned its skin to the point of charring. The man stood, bracing the flashlight, then looked back up into the sky again.

“ _Riddick_!”

The Killer of Men shook his head, but finally ran, anyway, stepping into the door of the storage container when they pulled it open for them, and aimed the flashlight at the floor, lifting his chin as he smirked at them. “The light hurts them.”

“We noticed!” Xander yelped, and smacked him in the chest. “ _Hello_! There was a whole flock of those… _things_ coming for you! They were going to eat you for killing their buddy! You can’t just… _sit_ there and act like they’re not coming, dammit, that’s dangerous!”

Caleb tugged Xander back, gently. “He’s all right, Xander. Focus on the fact that he’s _alive_ , not that he _could_ have died.”

“I will stress all I want, thank you very much,” Xander said, fiercely, but when Riddick ruffled  his hair and just curled his arm around his shoulder, tugging him against his side, he just let out a soft, whimpering sound, and curled into him. “….don’t do that again?”

Riddick just kissed the top of his head, then still holding him curled against his chest, turned to Dean. “We need as much light as possible.”

“Think we could take the lighting tubes from the ship?” Dean frowned slightly.

“I don’t see why not,” Caleb said, considering that. “Granted, I’m not an expert on how ships operate, exactly, but if we continued to keep them plugged into power…?”

“We’ve already got nine power cells on the sledge, I don’t think it would be much more to make it ten.” Dean shrugged, frowning slightly. “I don’t think that would take much effort. The problem is… _getting_ to the wreck, then getting from the wreck back to the shuttle. Because I fucking _refuse_ to let my brother waste away, locked inside a shuttle. So. How do we _get_ there?”

Xander frowned slightly. “…walk?”

He gave him a dry look. “That’s your answer? _Walk_?”

“…I’m not actually seeing any other way to get there?” He shrugged, biting his lower lip. “I mean, unless we could convert the Sand Cat to run on power cells, but I’m _pretty_ sure that would take a whole lot of time, probably more than just, you know, walking to the village in the first place would be…”

“He’s right.” Riddick pointed out, frowning slightly. “It would take less time to walk.”

“Yes, but we have no… protection, while walking.” Caleb said, looking displeased by the idea. Still, he leaned on Riddick’s other side, and reached out to lightly touch Xander’s bad shoulder. “And Xander is injured. If these animal’s senses are strong, and I would imagine, living in the dark, that their sense of smell is probably fairly phenomenal, then I imagine that they’ll be able to track his bleeding. Are we really sure that we want to go out there when Xander is bleeding? That _could_ draw them, mightn’t it?”

“It’s a risk we’ll have to take.” Dean said, frowning slightly. “We’ll bandage him up as well as we can, see what we can do…”

Xander swallowed the nerves down. “I can do it.”

“Frankly, I’d rather you _weren’t_ killed because you decided to try and be noble.” Caleb frowned.

Flushed, he nudged the elemental. “Relax, breezy. You’ll get to send a wind over us on a nicer planet, gotcha?”

“Naturally,” Caleb said, with a faint smile.

There wasn’t a lot of _hope_ in any of their eyes. Fierce determination, a raging fury, desperation and a keen sense of what needed to be done to get them where they needed to be, yes, all of those were clear in their eyes. But hope… hope wasn’t really there at all. They’d love to say that they thought they could do it, that they were confident in their abilities, more than prepared to trek across the desert to get off this planet.

The simple fact, though, was that leaving this planet wasn’t going to be easy. It hadn’t been easy arriving here, and it certainly wouldn’t be any easier to leave. Hell, they’d already had to kill a mercenary, and get the younger Winchester dangerously injured, just to get as far as they’d gotten so far.

They had a lot further to go.

“And miles more to go,” Xander mumbled, mostly to himself.

“What was that?” Caleb asked.

He looked up, startled back out of his own thoughts and back to the present, to the ever-pervading whistling howls that shivered through the air outside of their storage container, followed by the occasional thump as one of the animals would slam into the side of the bin, trying to get inside to the squishy and presumably delicious people within its confines. “Sorry, was just thinking. Look, long run, we _have_ to move. Because sitting here… well, that’s not going to get us out of here, either. We have to do _something_ , and I’ve never really been very good at sitting still and letting things happen, okay? I mean… I once stopped the end of the world from happening because I… was really, really good at talking. Which, yeah, by now, you’ve probably noticed is definitely a thing that I… do. Talk. A lot. I’m good at talking, really. It’s… about all I _am_ good at. So look, unless I can talk these animals to death, I say we gather up all the light that we can, and get our asses in gear.”

Dean ran his hand through his hair, then said, with a soft sigh, “Xander’s right. We better move.”

“Damn straight, I’m right.” Xander muttered, then cleared his throat awkwardly when the others turned to look at him. “…stop giving me that look, let’s just go, okay?”

 

\---

 

They’d gathered  up everything that they thought they could make use of, including anything that they figured could be made into weapons. As it turned out, Xander was about as good at the making of improvised weapons as Riddick was, which Caleb wasn’t entirely sure was something he found comforting, or not.

Once they had everything strapped on, tied and everything they could manage contained, the four of them had headed to the wreckage of the Hunter-Grantzner, to get the lights.

Caleb didn’t really like thinking about how often they almost got eaten, on their way there.

His mother had told him that things would be hard, once he got out on his own, but that he had to do it because his destiny was waiting out there. That the odds that had been calculated, to bring order to the universe required an elemental, two Furyans, and a human. He’d thought that was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard, when she’d come up with the information, but maybe she was right. After all, he was looping the string of lights that they’d pulled from the ship around his waist, like a glowing rope to keep him tied to the others, and Dean was pulling out a lighter to light the rough torches they’d made out of the remains of the alcohol they’d found in the ship. Caleb wasn’t _entirely_ sure where, exactly, Dean was _getting_ those lighters from, as he certainly wasn’t wearing the pants he’d been wearing when they’d crashed, so they couldn’t be there, those were _Riddick’s_ pants, but perhaps Riddick had been carrying a lighter…?

Long run, he supposed that wasn’t an important thing to wonder about, but… sometimes Caleb wondered.

Maybe that was how _he_ balanced things.

Caleb wanted to protect his lovers. He did. He wanted to keep them safe, wanted to find a way to make sure that they weren’t just walking into danger, but he wasn’t sure he knew how to do that. Not now, not like this.

He tugged the rope that was used to drag the sledge, where they’d stacked up all of the power cells, across his chest, trying to fashion it into something of a proper harness, so that he could tug the heavy cells back towards the shuttle. Dean followed suit, beside him, grinning at him in the glow of the lights from the wreck behind them. It was enough light that it seemed to be keeping the animals at bay, though Caleb could see them, moving around at the edges of the circle of light, wanting to come in, wanting to consume them, held at bay only by the lights that they had around them. The light was the only weapon they had that seemed to work.

“It’s gonna be okay, Caleb.” Dean said, squeezing his shoulder. “We’ll kick some ass, we’ll make it.”

“Hm, yes, of course we will.” He said, smiling faintly.

“And if you’ve been reading the odds, and seeing that they say something different,” he squeezed Caleb’s shoulder to the point where it actually hurt, “Don’t tell me.”

“Never,” he murmured, and curled his fingers on Dean’s jaw, kissing him softly. “We should get moving.”

“Keep a light on my back,” Riddick said, bending to pick up a part of the ropes, pulling it over his shoulder and tying it onto the harness he’d already set up to provide enough lights that the animals wouldn’t immediately attack him.  

“Can do,” Dean nodded.

“This better work,” Xander said, frowning as he fell into step beside them, his left arm completely strapped down to his chest, to make sure that he couldn’t move it at all. Caleb had been concerned that their boy was going to do something stupid, like trying to move his arm to save them from something, so he, with Dean’s help, had very tightly restricted Xander’s arm in a sling. Honestly, it would be hard for Xander to move that arm even if he tried. “Because I don’t know about you, but I’m not big on no-win situations.”

“Just keep that arm still,” Caleb said, and started jogging when Riddick called for them to _move_ , pulling the sledge full of the power cells. “And we’ll make it through.”

“Sure we will,” Xander grinned, though he didn’t really look all that convinced.

Caleb couldn’t blame him.

He certainly hadn’t convinced himself.

The sand that they ran on was like running on crystallized glass, their boots sliding slightly in the sand, shifting as though on the surface of a ship whenever they tried to move up little hills or something. It made walking unpredictable and uneven, the sledge bouncing along behind them as they tried to move as quickly as they could. Caleb really thought that if they had been somewhere with actual roads, or paths, that there would be no doubt that they’d be making extremely good progress. After all, they were all capable, strong men. But no, it was harder to move, because sometimes the sand would pull back at his heels, and Caleb would find himself sliding back, not quite able to find purchase.

Dean caught his elbow, pulling him up. “Hey, Caleb… you okay?”

He nodded, licking his lips. Caleb knew, as clearly as he knew the patterns of the eddies of the wind that curled over this planet, as clearly as he could predict the wing flaps of the beasts that were nearest to them by the way that they shifted the air, that were he mortal, he’d have been panting for breath, trying to get air into his lungs. Only he was all but _made_ of the air, it was natural. He could breathe as long as there was air to _be_ breathed.

Only Dean, who was still holding his elbow, _was_ panting heavily, trying to breathe in an atmo without enough oxygen for him.

Maybe that was something he _could_ help with.

His mother had told him that his father would always be there, watching over him, and maybe that was why it was so easy for Caleb to draw in the winds, moving them, shifting them.

Lightning suddenly flashed across the sky, lighting everything in sharp contrast for a moment, as though colour had disappeared. Everything was just black and white and _bright_. There were shrieks of pain and fear from the creatures, some of them backing away from the edge of the circle of light that their light tubes had created, some of them just scattering in terror.

“What the hell…?” Dean breathed, stunned.

“Storm.” Riddick frowned, turning back to face them. “Which wasn’t coming a moment ago.”

“I had to do something.” Caleb said, and lightning crashed over them again, throwing the animals into sharp relief again.

“So you bring a _storm_?” Xander yelped, jumping.

“It’s working.” Riddick said.

The animals were panicking. Caleb couldn’t really blame them, he certainly wouldn’t have known what to do if a storm had unexpectedly slammed into him, without notice, only he _had_ notice, he knew that it was coming because it was his fault that it was there, and the beasts were running. He knew that storms _did_ happen on this planet, because he didn’t create the storm, he just pulled it in, via the wind. There was, however, considerably more lightning than the animals were probably used to, and _that_ was Caleb’s doing.

The animals scattered to the wind, and Riddick hollered, “ _Start running_!”

It made sense, get going before the rain hit them. They probably wouldn’t be able to move as quickly in the rain, not when the sand was already this hard to walk through. Caleb didn’t really want to try and fight his way through mud. Of course, the pace that Riddick had set up was absolutely not one that they could maintain, especially not the way that Xander was panting, desperately trying to breathe as he hurried along beside them. Dean seemed remarkably skilled at keeping up with Riddick, but that made sense, Caleb thought. After all, wasn’t he a Furyan like Riddick was, too? If anyone on this gods-forsaken wreck of a planet was going to be able to keep up to Riddick, it was going to be Dean.

Caleb didn’t consider himself much of an athletic person. He’d never been trained for battle, he’d never had to fight for anything – in his life, things had been simply handed to him. He’d never even had to ask for something, he’d never wanted for anything. He knew that this was unusual, he’d gotten used to the idea of being _unusual_ , but now, he wished that he _had_ been trained to fight. Been shown how to use a weapon, been taught the exact way to push himself in full on survival mode. He could feel his body getting frustrated, his legs screaming at him for the pressure. He could breathe – that was one thing that he never had to worry about. Frankly, the idea that an elemental could ever be breathless was a funny one.

At least _that_ , he thought, was one thing he had going for him.

Running, however, was _not_ one thing that Caleb had going for him, in the slightest.

His slippers, which had certainly never been designed for running in, especially not in sand, slipped off  in the grip of the granules, and he dropped down to one knee, startled, his right slipper getting tugged right off his foot by the sand. Gasping in surprise, he struggled to get back to his feet, but the sand seemed to act like a living thing, clutching at his hands and knees, and he struggled to find purchase to get back to his feet.

The animals were getting closer.

He could feel them, brushing through the air, could feel their wings beating against the storm-heavy wind, getting nearer to him, swarming as though they could sense that there was weakness. Attacking the weak and injured members of the pack. Pack of predators swarming around, seeking out the easiest member to attack.

“Come on,” Xander caught Caleb’s arm with one hand, trying to tug him up to his feet. Difficult, as he didn’t really have the weight to pull him up properly, not with only one arm and the other trussed up like he was a turkey prepared for baking. “We need to move…”

“I’m working on that,” Caleb struggled up onto his feet, but his other slipper was half off, and when he struggled to move forward, he slipped again.

“Oh gods, this would be hilarious if they weren’t coming to eat us,” Xander panted.

Riddick abruptly stepped between them, curling his arms under Caleb’s shoulders, hauling him up to his feet, setting him up, and said, “We need to move.”

“Yes,” Caleb murmured, lightheaded.

“The things are coming!” Dean shouted, tugging Johns’ shotgun off of his back, swinging it around to face the animals, and priming. “We have to get going, or they’re going to _eat_ us!”

“Heard,” Xander cleared his throat, and Caleb glanced over at their human lover, hesitating. He was red in the face, sweating hard, and his eyes were slightly glazed. Caleb could only think that it was because poor Xander was running too hard, pushing far further than that wound of his was really wanting to let him. It was getting cold out here, now that the sun was down, so the way that he was sweating couldn’t be attributed to the heat of the desert. He looked about ready to drop, and Caleb, frowning, looked up at Riddick.

“He can’t do this.”

Xander apparently knew that they were talking about him, because he squawked, and said, “I can so!”

“Need to get _moving_ , guys…” Dean said, his back bumping against Caleb’s shoulder. He was patrolling, prowling around their little group with the gun, watching for any animal that got too close. “We _really_ need to get moving, we’re going to get _killed_ if we just sit here…”

Caleb looked up at Riddick. “He can’t run.”

“I’ll be _fine_ ,” Xander said, fiercely. “I can rest when we get there. I am _not_ weak.”

And then Xander started to run, stubbornly, bound and determined to prove to them that he was strong. Caleb wanted to reach out to catch him, wanted to force him to listen, but how was he supposed to _force_ his lover to listen to him?

“ _Run_.” Riddick said, after a moment, though he tightened his hold on the rope for the sledge, and started running again.

“…lovely.” Caleb murmured, mostly to himself, and followed suit.

The lightning still flashed overhead, warning of the impending storm, but it didn’t work quite as well, now, as it had at first. Perhaps the beasts were simply getting used to the flashing of the light, or they had realized that the flashes were so brief that they weren’t really doing any damage to them, and so only flinched and backed up by mere feet when the lightning flashed, now. They moved like snakes that had somehow been granted legs, he thought, sinewy and smooth, their heads bobbing side to side when they were examining them, making odd clicking sounds when they opened their fanged maws at them. Were they scenting them? Perhaps it was echolocation, he didn’t know, but he knew that they were hungry, and four men were a tempting treat.

And then Xander tumbled to his knees.

The animals shrieked. It had been tempting enough when Caleb had fallen, but they’d gotten him up quickly enough, and he hadn’t been bleeding. Xander was both bleeding and being terribly tempting, and Caleb couldn’t find himself surprised that the beasts howled and leapt forward.

Dean started shooting.

Caleb darted forward to try and pull Xander to his feet, but he could tell that the moment he reached the other’s side that it wasn’t going to happen. He was pale, now, skin white and clammy, not sweaty like it had been only moments before. His face was _bloodless_ , that was the best way he could see to describe it, that his face was actually bloodless, as though he’d been drained. And, seeing how darkly red stained his shoulder had gotten, soaking straight through the silken bandages they’d made out of Caleb’s clothes, he could see why his face would look so pale. Xander was bleeding a shocking amount. If he kept pushing himself like that, he was never going to get out of this desert.

“Riddick!” Caleb called, alarmed.

“I see,” he frowned.

“Guess you were right,” Xander rasped, licking his dry lips. “Everyone you help dies, Riddick.”

A cold shudder ran down his spine. “No.” He said, firmly, pressing his hand to Xander’s forehead, gauging his temperature. He was _cold_ to the touch. That didn’t seem right. Not how hot it was, out here. Xander shouldn’t be cold. “You’re not going to die.”

“Good luck with that,” he closed his eyes, panting. “Look, I’m just going to slow you down. Leave me here, I’ll distract the animals, get them off your back long enough for you to get to the shuttle.”

“We’re _not_ going to leave you!”

“Let me be useful,” Xander opened his eyes again, glazed and fever-bright. “Leave me.”

Caleb grit his jaw, and looked up at Riddick. The other’s silver eyes were hard to read, it was hard to tell what he was thinking. “Tell him we’re not leaving him.”

Riddick didn’t answer.

“ _Riddick_!” Caleb howled, hands fisted in Xander’s shirt. “Tell him we’re not leaving him!”

His voice cracked, when he said it, desperation ringing out of every word he said. It sounded pathetic, even to his own ears, but _gods_ , he couldn’t leave Xander here. He wanted to trust Riddick, he wanted to believe that he was going to do the right thing, but even Caleb could hear the desperate fear in his own voice, the utter terror that he was going to be _left_ here, that they would leave Xander behind because of his injury, because he couldn’t run. Caleb would stay here with him, if he had to, but he wasn’t going to _leave_ him.

They’d die together, if he was left behind.

“Come on, guys, we’re getting swamped here, we _need to move_!” Dean howled, and Caleb could dimly hear him shoving shells back into the gun, reloading it, then began firing again.

Riddick stepped forward, quickly, and slid his arms under Xander’s shoulders and knees, lifting him up, and apparently ignoring the soft gasp of pain that Xander made, head falling back against the other’s shoulders. Silver eyes met Caleb’s, and he said, firmly, “Get the cells. You heard Dean.”

He nodded, flooded with relief, which temporarily pushed the fear that they were going to be absolutely torn to pieces to the back of his mind, enough to reassure him, enough that Caleb was able to push himself up to his feet, tightening his hold on the power cell’s sledge, gripping tightly to the glowing light tube – and began to run after Riddick, who seemed able to jog ahead easily, even with the other held in his arms. Dean fell into step beside him, feet thumping in the sand beside him, and every few moments, he’d fire another shot, trying to keep the beasts away. Caleb, frankly, was impressed that Dean was able to pull the cells _and_ fire at the animals, keeping them back. He was having enough trouble running just with the power cells.

They burst into a valley, and Caleb almost wished that they _didn’t_ have the lights with them, just so that he didn’t have to see what, exactly, they were walking into.

There were beasts everywhere, scattered through the entire narrow space, flexing their little, clawed and almost stunted looking arms, leathery wings spreading out as they stretched their leathery necks towards them, jaws snapping in anticipation of tearing them apart. They held back a little, thwarted by the lights that almost haloed around them, protecting them as much as lights _could_ , but Caleb wished they were actual walls, not just the dull blue glow of lighted tubes and the flickering splutter of torches they’d made from bottles of alcohol.

Only Riddick wasn’t slowing as they entered, still running with Xander in his arms, and Caleb was more than willing to just follow him. Dean wasn’t hesitating, either, they must know something he didn’t.

Maybe it was just sagest to punch through.

He hoped that was what the answer was, that they were just committing suicide by Hades monsters.

It was stone, here, instead of sand, which made it a little faster to run on, which was a huge relief. The problem was that Caleb’s slippers had been long ago lost in the sand, and he was running barefoot, now, the soles of his feet catching on every little pebble and stone along the way, making running even harder than it had been before. He just knew that when they got to the shuttle, he’d have left bloody footsteps behind.

He was able to ignore, that, at least for now. Life was pain, at least it balanced out in the end.

Or so he’d always been taught.

They were ducking under the entrance of the valley, nearly to the valley mouth. Caleb could see lights, just over the edge of the horizon, and he thought, perhaps Sam and the Imam had turned on the lights of the shuttle, to show them where to go, to find them.

They were so close.

The sledge suddenly jerked behind them, and Caleb let out a shout of surprise as he was jerked backwards, slamming down to the ground and being dragged along behind the sledge.

He couldn’t figure out what was going on, not right away. Things were moving too quickly, he was being dragged along faster than he could manage to get his feet under him, and though he grabbed at the stone floor of the valley, he was still being jerked along, the wind itself pulling at him and tugging, though the wind was pulling a different direction than the sledge, which knocked him into Dean, who was equally scrambling for a hold on the ground.

And then Caleb discovered the reason.

One of the animals, larger than some of the others, old scars healed on its massive face, had its claws hooked on the back of the sledge. It made sense – the sledge itself was dark, even if it wasn’t dark around _them_ , and even without the light the creatures must have been able to tell that the sledge was moving, and the clever beasts had figured out that they were connected to it. Caleb might have applauded its intelligence, if this wasn’t just an absolute death sentence, its using of its mind.

Dean, though, Dean didn’t still like Caleb had, in abject horror. Instead, his companion grit his teeth, and swung the rifle around again, firing in the things already scarred face.

The animal reeled back, stopping its tugging, letting out a screech that Caleb could feel in the marrow of his bones, straight through him, high pitched and furious. It didn’t sound of pain, it sounded of rage and a lust of destruction, its wings suddenly stretching out wide from its shoulders as it reared up on its back legs, like a mythical dragon about to breathe fire to the skies. It was sheer power and strength contained in that dull dusty grey body, and Dean jerked one of his throwing knives out of his belt, slashing at the ropes that held him to the sledge. A moment later, his companion was scrambling to his feet, and shoved the knife into Caleb’s hands before he was priming the gun, and firing at the beast again.

“ _Run_.” Dean ordered.

Caleb scrambled to his feet, able to get purchase this time – he thought that under the circumstances he could have managed to get to his feet even if he’d been trapped in a glass ball in zero gravity, desperation was driving him. Terror was an excellent motivator, as it turned out.

Wrapping the rope that was attached to the sledge around his arm, Caleb started running again. He was right, when he’d said that the sledge of power cells was heavy.

But he was also right when he said fear was a powerful motivator.

Because he ran, without knowledge of the weight, without anything in his mind except for the need to get out of danger, to get to Riddick and Xander, to get the power cells so that they could get off of this planet – and to provide aid to Dean, if he could think of a way. But all he could do was _run_ , dragging the sledge as quickly as he could, on his own, fueled by adrenaline and fear.

The gun fired, again, and again, then Caleb heard an ominous _click_ that told him that Dean was out of ammunition.

Spinning, he looked back, gaping in horror as Dean swung the rifle like a club. It made impact with the beast’s head, and the wood splintered, breaking the gun nearly in half, leaving Dean just clutching at the wooden stock, pretty much left defenseless. Gripping the knife Dean had thrust him, tightly, Caleb lifted his hand, considering just trying to throw it himself. As he’d said before, he had absolutely no training in fighting, and certainly not with throwing knives. But he was desperate enough to try it.

Until strong fingers plucked the knife from his hands, and Caleb gaped up at Riddick as the other man flung the knife, himself.

It landed in the chest of the beast with a very solid sounding _thump_ , and Dean took a step back, startled.

He spun, then, on the heel of his boot and hurried towards them, tossing the splintered stock of the gun aside as he did, and Caleb actually wondered for a moment how he’d known to come, until he remembered that he had been howling his name to the wind, and Dean’s name was curling through the air of the planet itself, curling around them in Caleb’s desperation to have him come back with them. Dean bolted up towards them, bending to snatch up the rope that Caleb held, then continued running, all but dragging him along with them, and Riddick, with Xander still cradled in his arms, hurried with them.

Caleb couldn’t remember the rest of the run. He remembered dropping to his knees just on the ramp of the shuttle, and he remembered Dean’s hand fisting in the back of his shirt and hauling him up onto the ship, he remembered blinding lights suddenly all around him, he remembered the final sounding thump of the shuttle door closing behind them.

But everything else was sort of hazy.

Until the engines flared, and he felt a weightless jerk in his gut that told him they’d set into the air itself.

They were free.

 

\---

 

Xander lay on the lone bench in the shuttle, his cheek pressed to Caleb’s chest, which was cooler than anyone else’s chest he’d ever encountered, but Xander sort of supposed that if _he_ was partially made out of air, he’d probably be pretty cool to the touch, too. Caleb was pressed in against the wall, and his fingers were brushing lightly through his hair, which had Xander all but falling asleep. It was comforting.

After all, he could hear the heartbeat under the chest his cheek was pressed against.

That meant a lot.

“Hey,” Dean said, quietly, and Xander opened an eye to look up at the freckled blond.

“…hey,” Xander murmured, and shifted a little, trying to give Dean room to crawl onto the bench if he wanted it. He wasn’t disappointed when the other lay down beside him, squeezing into the narrow space, his chest pressed against Xander’s back. He was content to be sandwiched. Rather liked it, even. “How’s Sam doing?”

“Good,” Dean sighed, his breath ruffling Xander’s hair as he tossed his arm over his hip, so that Dean was holding both him and Caleb. Caleb made a soft, contented sound, but didn’t open his eyes. He might have been sleeping, though Xander thought he was maybe just trying to enjoy being _alive_. “He’s going to have some pretty bad scars… Johns really cut him up. But they’re healing well, and he’s moving around a little, so that’s good.”

Xander grinned, relieved. “Good. I was worried.”

Dean grinned, crookedly. “Naw, he’s a tough kid. He’ll be fine.”

“Where is he?” He yawned, and tried to muffle the gesture in Caleb’s shoulder.

“He and the Imam are sleeping in the chairs up at the front. It’s probably better for Sammy’s back to be sitting, anyway, and besides, the four of us wouldn’t exactly fit in them, so…”

“…are the four of us planning on fitting here?” Xander asked, quietly. He didn’t just mean whether or not they would fit – although that was certainly a concern, as this was a very narrow little bench – but whether or not Riddick actually _meant_ to join them. He couldn’t exactly blame him, after all, if he didn’t want to, but…

Riddick suddenly settled on the edge of the narrow bench, and Xander bit his tongue, already regretting asking it. Maybe he should have a little more _faith_ in him.

“We’re not going to fit on this bed unless we’re fucking, or something.” Dean mumbled into Xander’s shoulder, though he was grinning as he did, brushing his thumb over Caleb’s hip.

“I see no problem with that,” Riddick said, running his hand over each of their arms in turn.

“I do, in front of my brother,” Dean snorted.

“We won’t always be in front of your brother,” Caleb said, opening his eyes finally, smiling softly. Sleepily.

Xander groaned softly. “You know, it’s going to be difficult to find a place with a room large enough for four people to share.”

“Also not a problem.” Riddick rumbled softly, and Xander felt sort of pleased that Riddick was respectful of the fact that Sam _was_ in fact in the shuttle, and spoke quietly enough that only the three of them could hear him. The Killer of Men, Xander had been pleased to discover, had a softer side. “So long as it has a place to lie down, we’re fine.”

“Excuse me,” Caleb sighed, “But I’m used to silk sheets. This place to lie down must have silk sheets.”

“Princess,” Xander smirked slightly, squeezing Caleb’s thigh to take the sting from his words. “All I need is the three of you.”

Dean groaned. “ _That_ was sappy.”

“And selfish,” Riddick agreed, with a chuckle. “Three lovers? Somewhat needy, don’t you think?”

“Yep.” Xander grinned. “Three is so much better than just two. And one? Not enough. Once you’ve had a foursome, I’m not sure you can go back to just… one lover.”

“Good thing we’re not leaving, then.” Caleb murmured.

 


End file.
